This article re-defines evidence-based policing as ‘a decision-making process which integrates the best available evidence, professional judgement and community values, preferences and circumstances’. The article argues that this definition serves to position evidence-based policing more clearly as a research-informed, practitioner-centred, and community-oriented approach to policing practice. It moreover advances links between evidence-based policing and related concepts—such as evidence-based medicine—which, in turn, promises to address misunderstandings in (and streamline) debates about evidence-based practice across disciplinary lines. The article provides an in-depth discussion of each key element of its proposed three-pronged definition—best available evidence, professional judgement, and community values, preferences, and circumstances—through a review of ongoing discussions about evidence-based policing in the field of criminology and evolving discussions (and conceptualizations) of evidence-based practice across other disciplines. Finally, the article outlines how its proposed definition—and its three integral elements—can guide the future development of an evidence-based policing agenda.
In the late 1990s, Lawrence Sherman, inspired by the evidence-based movement in the field of medicine, introduced evidence-based policing as ‘a new paradigm for police improvement and for public safety’ ( Sherman, 1998, p. 2). Following Sherman, this new paradigm, building on Goldstein’s problem-oriented policing, promotes the ‘use of the best available research on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units and officers’ ( Sherman, 1998, p. 3).
Ever since its inception, evidence-based policing has gained significant popularity, particularly in the Anglosphere. Its rise has led to the creation of professional societies and educational programmes in several countries, and become particularly associated with institutions like the What Works Center for Crime Reduction in the UK and the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University in the USA. It is further reflected in the emergence of a range of initiatives such as the creation of an Evidence-Based Policing Matrix (a tool designed to translate research into practice), the launch of the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, or the establishment of an Evidence-based Policing Hall of Fame (for a recent overview, see Piza and Welsh, 2021).
While the idea of evidence-based policing has become increasingly popular both within and outside of academia, its key features and implementation, however, have remained the subject of intense debate. Though most scholars agree that evidence-based policing aims to promote the production and usage of scientific knowledge about policing practices, they continue to debate the role which different types of evidence, professional experience, and community values play in this process ( Brown et al., 2018; Bullock et al., 2019; Fleming and Rhodes, 2018; Mitchell and Lewis, 2017). Currently, several definitions exist for evidence-based policing which remains a concept difficult to nail down. As noted by Brown (2019, p. 109), evidence-based policing ‘at present [. . .] is a muddle’.
This lack of clarity is problematic. Not only does it generate uncertainties about how evidence-based policing should be taught in the classroom and implemented in practice. It also creates misunderstandings and false expectations among scholars, policy makers, and practitioners which can be damaging for its acceptance and further development. This article aims to address this problem. Concretely, it suggests that proponents of evidence-based policing can strengthen and clarify their terminology by drawing on the definitions and discussions of evidence-based practice in other disciplines.
As this article will show, definitions of evidence-based practice have developed considerably outside the field of criminology, including in medicine where the idea of evidence-based practice first took off. Notably, since the early 2000s, it has become widely associated with a decision-making process which integrates (1) the best available evidence, (2) professional judgement, and (3) client values and preferences (see, for instance, Guyatt et al., 2000; Guyatt and Busse, 2006). Taking inspiration from this three-pronged conception of evidence-based practice, this article proposes to re-define evidence-based policing as a decision-making process which integrates the best available evidence, professional judgement and community values, preferences and circumstances. This definition, as the article will show below, is well suited to clarify and strengthen the foundations of evidence-based policing, as well as to formulate an ambitious agenda for its future development which reflects the overall direction of travel in the evidence-based policing literature.
The article will proceed as follows. First, it proposes a re-definition of evidence-based policing which draws on conceptions of evidence-based practice outside the field of criminology. Second, the article discusses the meaning and significance of the proposed definition’s three key components: (1) best available evidence, (2) professional judgement, and (3) community values, preferences, and circumstances. Finally, it reflects on the proposed definition’s potential to drive forward the study and practice of evidence-based policing.
The evidence-based movement, whose roots can be traced back to the 19th century and earlier, first took off in the field of medicine in the early 1990s. In a landmark article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Evidence-based Medicine Working Group, in 1992, first proclaimed the idea of evidence-based medicine as a ‘new paradigm for medical progress’ ( Guyatt et al., 1992, p. 2420).
This new paradigm was soon widely described as a health care revolution, and later hailed as one of the 15 medical milestones since 1840 by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) ( Every-Palmer and Howick, 2014, p. 908; Montori and Guyatt, 2008, p. 1814). In the late 1990s, the evidence-based movement spread quickly to other fields of research, notably those focussed on human services such as education, social work, and criminology. While the rapid expansion of the evidence-based movement added further to its appeal, including in policy circles, it also generated much debate across disciplines about the meaning of evidence-based practice.
In the field of medicine, definitions of evidence-based practice considerably evolved in the early years following its introduction. Building on the work of the Evidence-based Working Group, Sackett et al. (1996, p. 71) prominently highlighted in the mid-1990s that ‘the practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research’. Evidence-based medicine, thus, became early on associated with a process of clinical decision-making which emphasizes the need to combine research evidence and practical expertise. A few years later, this definition was further amended to position evidence-based medicine more clearly as a patient-centred decision-making process.
The Evidence-based Medicine Working Group highlighted in this regard the consideration of patient values and preferences as a second principle of evidence-based medicine ( Guyaratt et al., 2000, p. 1291). Following this re-orientation, evidence-based medicine has subsequently been defined ‘as the conscientious and judicious use of current best evidence in conjunction with clinical expertise and patient values to guide health care decisions’ ( Every-Palmer and Howick, 2014, p. 908). Evidence-based medicine, as succinctly put by Straus (2018, p. 18), in other words, thus ‘requires the integration of the best research evidence with our clinical expertise and our patients’ unique values and circumstances’.
Over the years, this definition has travelled into other disciplines as well, such as education and social work. Drawing directly on evolving definitions of evidence-based medicine, Spencer et al. (2012, p. 129), for instance, defined evidence-based practice in education ‘as a decision-making process that integrates (1) the best available evidence, (2) professional judgment, and (3) client values and context’. Similarly, McNeece and Thyer (2004, p. 10) noted that ‘evidence-based practice in social work makes practice decisions utilizing a variety of different sources of scientifically credible evidence, in conjunction with the social worker’s clinical skills, and the client’s preferences’. Across several disciplines, evidence-based practice thus has become largely associated with a three-pronged approach to decision-making which promotes the integration of best available evidence, professional judgement, and client values.
In a notable exception to this trend, proponents of evidence-based policing in the field of criminology have so far shied away from adopting a similar definition. Akin to early perspectives of evidence-based medicine, evidence-based policing was first defined by Lawrence W. Sherman in the late 1990s as ‘the use of best available research on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units and officers’ or, more simply put, as the use of ‘research to guide practice and evaluate practitioners’ ( Sherman, 1998, pp. 3–4). These early conceptions of evidence-based policing not only quickly gained popularity but also generated much debate about the meaning and implementation of evidence-based practice across academic, policy, and practitioner circles. While such debate has increasingly featured passionate calls for a more methodologically open ( Fielding, 2019; Lydon, 2023), craft-valuing ( Willis and Toronjo, 2023), and community-oriented ( Gill, 2023; Mitchell and Lewis, 2017) approach to evidence-based policing—echoing discussions in other disciplines—no systematic efforts, however, have thus far been made to substantially rethink how evidence-based policing is best defined. Conceptions of evidence-based practice in criminology, as a consequence, have remained surprisingly out of tune with those dominating other fields of study.
Against this backdrop, this article argues that proponents of evidence-based policing stand to gain from adopting a revised definition of evidence-based policing which reflects changing conceptions of evidence-based practice across other disciplines, as well as ongoing trends within the evidence-based policing literature. Specifically, the article proposes to re-define evidence-based policing as a decision-making process which integrates the best available evidence, professional judgement and community values, preferences and circumstances. This definition, the article argues, has the potential to clarify and strengthen the foundations of evidence-based policing by positioning it more clearly as a research-informed, practitioner-centred, and community-oriented approach to policing practice which reflects ongoing trends in both the evidence-based policing literature, and the evidence-based movement more broadly. To substantiate this argument, the article, in the following sections, will discuss in greater detail the meaning and significance of each key element of the proposed definition in view of ongoing debates about evidence-based practice within and outside the field of criminology.
Of the three elements which this article considers integral to the definition of evidence-based policing, the usage of best available evidence may seem the most straightforward. After all, as noted above, Sherman (1998, p. 3) introduced evidence-based policing as ‘the use of the best available evidence on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units and officers’. However, proponents for evidence-based policing have promoted different understandings of what passes for best available evidence, which in turn has created considerable conceptual confusion. Against this backdrop, and by drawing on discussions in disciplines outside of criminology, this section briefly outlines how the term best available evidence should best be understood as part of the definition proposed in this paper.
The question of what should be considered ‘evidence’ has long been at the centre of discussions about the meaning and implementation of evidence-based policing. Early proponents of evidence-based policing, inspired by discussions in the field of medicine, have notably foregrounded randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as ‘the most convincing method of evaluating crime prevention programmes’ ( Welsh, 2006, pp. 307–311). Lawrence Sherman (2013, p. 420) in this regard highlighted that the label of ‘evidence’ should be reserved for studies which at a minimum comply with the ‘rock-bottom standard’ of involving a comparison group. Following such perspectives, traditional formulations of evidence-based policing have been associated with a narrow interpretation of evidence which continues to reverberate to this day ( Knutsson and Tompson, 2017, p. 5). More recently, Piza and Welsh (2021, p. 3), for instance, stressed in their introduction to an edited volume on evidence-based policing that best available evidence ‘results from high-quality evaluation studies that possess a high degree of internal, construct, and statistical conclusion validity’.
It is important to note that this view of best available evidence shares little in common with the term’s usage outside the field of criminology. While in the field of medicine the evidence-based movement too has been associated with the promotion of RCTs, evidence-based medicine knows no strict minimum standard for the identification of evidence. Instead, proponents of evidence-based medicine have promoted the idea of an evidence pyramid—a ranking system of evidence types—which presents practitioners with a trail for identifying the best available evidence for answering their medical questions ( Guyatt and Busse, 2006, p. 28; Sackett et al., 1996, p. 72). This system, though privileging some types of evidence over others, is in principle open-ended, and allows for the inclusion of very different forms of empirical data. As highlighted by some proponents, such data can also include ‘limited anecdotal, indirect and circumstantial findings’ which during an acute crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic ‘ought not be ignored, given [. . .] the consequences of inaction’ ( Lancaster et al., 2020, p. 4).
Following this view of evidence-based practice, the usage of best available evidence does thus not imply the enforcement of a minimum standard. Rather, it stresses the need for practitioners to competently review available evidence in decision-making processes. A similar perspective has also been adopted outside the medical discipline. In the field of education, for instance, Spencer et al. (2012, p. 133) highlighted that ‘the mandate to use the best available evidence [suggests] that imperfect evidence, used wisely, is better than no evidence at all’. The power of best available evidence, they subsequently argued, ‘is that it [. . .] provides flexibility so that decisions can be as effective as possible given the evidence that is available’ ( Spencer et al., 2012, p. 136).
These conceptions of best available evidence, which dominate in disciplines outside of criminology, have also increasingly shaped discussions about the meaning and practice of evidence-based policing. Some scholars, such as Moore (2006, p. 325) have noted as early as 2006 that in his ‘preferred version of “evidence-based policing”, the standards of what constitutes “research”, or “evidence”, or “scientific research” would be more open and flexible than in Sherman’s conception’. More recently, Lum and Koper (2017, p. 23) highlighted that for the implementation of evidence-based policing ‘all types of research [. . .] can and should be used’, while others have called for the greater usage of interdisciplinarity ( Lydon, 2023) and mixed methods as ‘a viable alternative to the restricted diet of the experimental design’ ( Boulton et al., 2021; Fielding, 2019, p. 205). In the same vein, Weisburd et al. (2023, p. 4) furthermore stressed in a recent edited volume on the future of evidence-based policing that ‘there is not one method in science that is “right” for EBP’ while noting the need for a ‘large toolbox to deal with the broad array of questions in policing’. Altogether, thus, calls are mounting for the adoption of what Innes (2019, p. 137) has referred to as a ‘catholic vision’ of evidence-based policing which embraces ‘a more pluralistic and open approach to what counts as “evidence”’.
The definition promoted by this article closely aligns itself with such a vision and espouses a view of best available evidence which contrasts with the perspective taken by traditional proponents of evidence-based policing. Specifically, this article holds that the usage of best available evidence implies the competent review and identification of the most reliable evidence relevant for a particular decision. This, as noted by Spencer et al. (2012, p. 136), in turn means that ‘when evidence is incomplete and less than definitive [. . .] practitioners must exercise greater professional judgement’. Such judgement, in turn, marks a second integral element of evidence-based policing, which the next section will discuss in more detail.
Professional judgement, this article argues, should be viewed as a second integral element of evidence-based policing. While this element too may seem commonsensical to many proponents of the concept, its status, as will be shown below, remains remarkably ambiguous and a source of misunderstandings about the meaning and implementation of evidence-based policing. Discussions about the role of professional judgement, this article argues in this regard, require greater attention and should be put on a more equal footing to those surrounding the usage of best available evidence.
The absence of professional judgement from definitions of evidence-based policing has long been central to prominent critiques which have stressed the ‘need for a great deal of practical wisdom as well as rigorous and responsive science to move the field forward’ ( Moore, 2006, p. 335, see also Bradley and Nixon, 2013; Sparrow, 2011). Proponents of evidence-based policing, in turn, have vehemently rejected such critiques. Sherman (2013, p. 419), for instance, noted that ‘attempts to portray [evidence-based policing] as trying to replace rather than supplement experience [. . .] are merely “noise” in relation to the signal’, while stressing in a later article ( 2015, p. 17) that evidence-based practice ‘is about adding evidence to policing, not about replacing experience’.
Despite these assertions, few circulating definitions of evidence-based policing, however, explicitly include experience as a defining element. 1 As a result, the role and status of experience in the implementation of evidence-based policing remains highly ambiguous. While some proponents, such as Huey and Ricciardelli (2016, p. 121) have argued that ‘police experience is not only valued but essential to the process [of evidence-based policing]’, Koziarski and Huey (2021a, p. 276; 2021b, p. 428), on the other hand, have recently stressed that evidence-based policing intends ‘to replace experience, intuition and craft-based thinking’, though its objective ‘is not to completely omit these sources of knowledge’.
In view of such mixed signalling, it remains largely unclear to what extent and how experience matters for evidence-based policing. This is problematic. Not only does it give credence to those who have—one may argue rather unhelpfully—contrasted evidence-based policing with practice-oriented or reflective perspective on police work (see, for instance, Fleming and Rhodes, 2018; Staller and Koerner, 2021). It also threatens to generate misconceptions, and to fuel aversion among practitioners who, as recently highlighted by Selby-Fell and Newton (2022, p. 14), often perceive evidence-based policing as an approach that is ‘opposed to or devalues professional experience’ and that ‘can undermine officers’ professionalism and serve the needs of management rather than the front line’.
This article argues that one way to address this problem lies in the adoption of a definition which includes professional judgement as an integral aspect of evidence-based policing. Such a definition has long been adopted in other disciplines. Evidence-based medicine, for instance, has long been defined as a practice which integrates ‘individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research’ ( Sackett et al., 1996, p. 71). Drawing on this definition, proponents of evidence-based medicine, in turn, have stressed that ‘evidence alone is never sufficient to make a clinical decision’ ( Guyatt and Busse, 2006, p. 26), and that it is ‘individual clinical expertise [which] decides whether [. . .] external evidence applies to [an] individual patient at all’ ( Sackett, 1997, p. 3). While some proponents of evidence-based policing have paid lip service to this understanding of evidence-based practice ( Sherman, 2013, p. 418), clear articulations of how the notion of ‘clinical expertise’ applies to the field of criminology, however, are so far largely absent.
Some inspiration for how the notion of ‘clinical expertise’ can be integrated into definitions of evidence-based policing can be found in the field of education where Spencer et al. (2012, p. 136) have translated the medical notion of ‘clinical expertise’ with the term ‘professional judgement’. Professional judgement, they argue, should guide every step in a decision-making process from the identification of a problem to the consultation of sources and the weighing of the costs and benefits for alternative solutions. Such judgement, they further stressed, should not be reduced to professional experience but rather be seen as incorporating different elements including experience, professional skills, and systematic learning ( Spencer et al., 2012, pp. 136–137).
The definition promoted by this article aligns itself with this perspective. By viewing professional judgement as an integral element of evidence-based policing, it advocates for an understanding of evidence-based policing as a practitioner-centred and reflective process, which values experience and practical knowledge. It moreover promotes a vision of evidence-based policing which is equally committed to strengthening the ‘best available evidence’ and the ability of practitioners to make sound ‘professional judgements’. In view of the latter, the approach to evidence-based policing promoted in this article, for instance, emphasizes the need to give serious attention to the challenges which impede sound judgement, such as time and organizational constraints ( Huey and Mitchell, 2021; Selby-Fell and Newton, 2022), as well as the proactive development of relevant skills, including the ability to recognize and articulate problems, to weave together the best available evidence—especially where little evidence is available—and to make sound decisions on the adoption and implementation of policing measures with due consideration for the values, preferences, and circumstances of those affected by them.
Importantly, this emphasis on professional judgement is not to reduce the significance of scientific evidence for evidence-based policing, but rather to highlight the key role played by professional skills and experience in the effective and responsible usage of evidence in daily practice. The article’s proposed definition of evidence-based policing, in this regard, echoes Jonathan-Zamir and Weisburd’s (2023, pp. 201–205) recent call to ‘strengthen (rather than suppress) the intuition/experience based information processing system’ which inevitably plays a key role in real-world decision-making processes, and ‘to begin viewing scientific evidence and professional experience not as conflicting viewpoints, but as elements that have to be combined for successful policing’.
A final integral element of evidence-based policing, this article argues, is a serious concern for the values, preferences, and circumstances of policed communities. Though sometimes alluded to in the literature, this element has not yet been clearly integrated into definitions of evidence-based policing. This article argues that such an integration is necessary not least as a greater focus on community values, preferences, and circumstances promises to strengthen evidence-based policing as a context-sensitive approach, and by extension to improve its acceptance among both practitioners and the public.
Outside criminology, evidence-based practice has long been identified with a client-focussed decision-making process which calls for a due consideration of the values, preferences, and circumstances of individuals and communities affected by proposed interventions. Proponents of evidence-based medicine, for instance, have long stressed that ‘evidence is never enough’ ( Guyatt et al., 2000) and that evidence-based practice requires ‘compassion, sensitive listening skills, and broad perspectives from the humanities and social sciences’. More recently, Greenhalgh et al. (2014, p. 3), in this regard, highlighted the need for evidence to be ‘better presented, better explained, and applied in a more personalized way with sensitivity to context and individual goals’.
This view of evidence-based practice has also resonated in other disciplines. In the field of social work, for instance, Gambrill (1999, p. 34) introduced evidence-based practice as a process in which ‘clients are involved as informed participants (in contrast to uniformed or misinformed)’. Likewise, in the field of education, Spencer et al. (2012, p. 138) highlighted that client values and circumstances are an integral part of evidence-based practice which supports the overall goal of improved student outcomes, for instance, by increasing ‘buy-in from students and their families’.
While the consideration of client values, preferences, and circumstances has been presented as a defining element of evidence-based practice across several disciplines, its status in evidence-based policing, by contrast, appears less certain. Many proponents, indeed, do not define evidence-based policing as community-oriented but rather present it as an approach which can support community-oriented forms of policing by providing evidence for their utility. Neyroud (2021, p. 29), for instance, recently argued that from an evidence-based perspective ‘community-oriented policing strategies have positive effects on citizen satisfaction, perceptions of disorder, and police legitimacy, but limited effects on crime and fear of crime’.
This view stands in contrast to calls by other scholars for a stronger recognition of community values and circumstances as an integral part of evidence-based policing. Mitchell and Lewis (2017, p. 193), for instance, stressed that evidence-based policing can learn from evidence-based medicine by recognizing that ‘critical appraisal of evidence is just one aspect of an evidence-based practice [which] requires a patient-centered, shared decision-making process that acknowledges that the values, preferences and beliefs of patients are of equal importance as the sum of the evidence’. ‘True [evidence-based policing]’, they argued in this regard, ‘requires transparency and open dialogue with communities’ ( Mitchell and Lewis, 2017, p. 195). In the same vein, Gill (2023, p. 135), drawing on Scheider et al. (2009), recently highlighted that ‘perhaps community-oriented policing should be viewed not as a strategy in itself, but as a backdrop against which all other proactive, evidence-based policing strategies are implemented’.
This article aligns itself with the latter perspectives on the relationship between evidence-based and community-oriented policing. The definition proposed by this article consequently promotes a vision of evidence-based policing as a decision-making process in which practitioners with equal rigour consider not only the best available evidence but also the values, preferences, and circumstances of affected communities. The article contends that the value of this understanding of evidence-based policing is three-fold. First, it promises to deliver more effective policing interventions insofar as the rigorous consideration of community values, preferences, and circumstances can provide critical information about the feasibility and acceptance of potential measures, as well as potentially adverse effects of interventions (on specific groups and individuals). It, in this regard, echoes Stephen’s (2023, p. 311) recent assertion that greater police transparency and community engagement can lead community members to understand and support more efficient policing measures.
Second, and relatedly, the proposed vision of evidence-based policing also promises to strengthen the legitimacy of policing practices which, following Sherman (2013, p. 380) presents, together with the strengthening of public safety, the central goal of the evidence-based policing agenda. It is important to bear in mind that these two goals exist in a tense relationship insofar as policing measures which promise to strengthen public safety can be unacceptable to policed communities and vice versa ( Morrell and Rowe, 2019, p. 120). An equally rigorous review of the best available evidence and community values, preferences, and circumstances, the article argues in this regard, promises to generate a process of evidence-based policing which can equally address—and strike a balance between—the goals to advance both public safety and the legitimacy of policing actions, thereby avoiding the disproportionate use of force and intrusion (see also, Sherman, 2023, p. 20).
Finally, the vision promoted by this article may serve to articulate an approach to evidence-based policing which is also more attractive to and accepted by practitioners, particularly those who fear that evidence-based policing might undermine—or even replace—community policing ( Huey and Mitchell, 2021, p. 34). Importantly, this is not to reduce the significance of evidence for policing decisions and practice, but rather to stress that community values ‘should not dominate [an evidence-based] judgement [. . .] any more than the best available evidence without consideration of [community] values’ ( Spencer et al., 2012, p. 138).
This article has sought to clarify and advance the meaning of evidence-based policing by defining it as ‘a decision-making process which integrates the best available evidence, professional judgement and community values, preferences and circumstances’. This definition, which draws on evolving perspectives on evidence-based practice within and outside the field of criminology, positions evidence-based policing as a research-informed, practitioner-centred, and community-oriented approach to policing practice. Following this definition, this article’s concluding section suggests three key directions for advancing the agenda of evidence-based policing.
First, drawing on the provided definition of evidence-based policing, the article calls for further efforts to strengthen, synthesize, and communicate the best available evidence on policing programmes and practices. These efforts, as noted above, should not narrowly focus on the promotion of (quasi)experimental research—as has often been the case in the past ( Tilley, 2009)—but rather promote a view of best available evidence which attaches importance to studies (and the triangulation of findings) across the methodological spectrum. The article’s vision for strengthening evidence-based policing, against this backdrop, aligns itself with recent calls to create better evidence for policing practices through the use and combination of a variety of study designs including mixed methods research ( Brown et al., 2018), as well as the creation of frameworks for synthesizing research—such as the EMMIE framework—which do not exclude but systematically integrate the contributions of non-(quasi)experimental studies ( Sidebottom and Tilley, 2021).
Second, building on the promoted definition of evidence-based policing, the article calls for efforts to strengthen the professional judgement of practitioners. Such efforts may involve (but should not be limited to) research on—and the teaching of—(ways to attain and weave together) different types of expertise—such as craft knowledge, institutional knowledge, community knowledge, and research knowledge—which together can strengthen elements of professional judgement, including the competent identification and articulation of policing problems, the rigorous review of (evidence that supports) possible policing solutions, and the careful assessment and determination of the feasibility and appropriateness of concrete policing measures within local contexts (see also Tuffin, 2023; Willis and Toronjo, 2023). 2 These efforts, the article stresses, should be considered as no less important for advancing evidence-based policing than efforts aimed at improving the best available evidence for policing measures and practices, insofar as both are critical to the success of evidence-based policing.
Third, the article calls for efforts to strengthen the integration of community values, preferences, and circumstances into policing decisions. Such efforts, as noted above, are critical not only to strengthen the effectiveness of policing measures but also to improve their public legitimacy which, not least in view of heightened public scrutiny, has emerged as a central concern within the evidence-based policing community, and beyond ( Gill, 2023; Neyroud, 2021). The article concretely argues that key efforts, in this regard, should focus on the production and transfer of knowledge about local challenges for promising policing measures, on the improvement of methods to advance police-community dialogue, as well as on the development of techniques for a rigorous integration of community (including minority) voices in policing decisions.
Altogether, the article’s proposed definition suggests an ambitious agenda for evidence-based policing which attaches equal importance to advancing the best available evidence, practitioners’ professional judgement, and the integration of community values, preferences, and circumstances. Such an agenda, this article argues, promises to advance a more holistic understanding of evidence-based policing which considers the generation and availability of rigorous evidence for the efficacy of individual policing measures and practices to be an important (but not the sole) determinant of successful evidence-based decision-making. The proposed agenda, furthermore, promises to advance links between evidence-based policing and discussions surrounding related concepts—such as evidence-based medicine. These linkages, the article argues, in turn, promise to generate opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning and exchange, and the development of a more coherent cross-disciplinary vision of evidence-based practice which can effectively address persistent misunderstandings surrounding the role and meaning of evidence-based practice in academic, practitioner, and policy circles.
While the article contends that the proposed definition carries much potential to advance the debate and agenda of evidence-based policing, this, however, is not to say that it offers a panacea. The proposed definition is indeed perhaps best viewed as a platform for further (necessary) reflection about (the meaning, sufficiency and appropriate balance between) the objectives and key principles of evidence-based policing. It, in this light, should not be understood as an end point but rather as a way point along the path of conceptualizing evidence-based policing which, arguably, is best travelled in dialogue with proponents and critics of evidence-based practice across disciplinary lines.
Huey and Ricciardelli (2016, p. 121), in a notable exception, define evidence-based practice as embodying the idea that ‘research should be the outcome of a blending of police experience with academic research skills’.