Evidence‐based policing in Canada

• Published in: Canadian public administration 2018-03, Vol.61 (1), p.135-139
• Main Author: McKenna, Paul F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Best practice; Clients; Codification; Community policing; Development policy; Evidence based research; Evidence-based practice; Forecasts and trends; Knowledge based development; Organizational structure; Police; Policing; Policy making; Public administration; Public sector; Resting
• ISSN: 0008-4840; 1754-7121
• DOI: 10.1111/capa.12256

Evidence-based policy has become a consistent term of art across the landscape of public administration and public sector management. Also referred to as evidence-informed or knowledge-based policy development, what is generally being invoked are reliable approaches to policy formulation grouned on factual bases, as opposed to subjective renderings which may accord with directions that have appeal to particular constituencies or support approaches that satisfy economic or fiscal imperatives that satisfy specific "clients of government systems. In recent years the evidence-based approach has become an explicit feature of research being conducted in relation to policing in Canada and abroad. Lawrence Sherman (1998), a former director of the US Police Foundation, has defined evidence-based policing as: ...the use of the best available research on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units and officers. Put more simply, evidence-based policing uses research to guide practice and evaluate practitioners. It uses the best evidence to shape the best practice. It is a systematic effort to parse out and codify unsystematic "experience" as the basis for police work, refining it by ongoing systematic testing of hypotheses (pp. 3-4). With much earlier police research resting upon custom (i.e., preserving rank-based, hierarchical organizational structures), convenience (i.e., supporting the so-called benefits of rapid response strategies), and contingency (i.e., dealing with significant external pressures for organizational or operational change), this approach constitutes a most welcome development. However, there have been challenges in generating a proactive and systematic research culture in policing in Canada.