Tidying up a few misconceptions around evidence-based policing: Reply to Staller and Koerner (2021)

ABSTRACT

In this piece we reply to a commentary from Staller and Koerner on our work entitled, #Defund or #Re-Fund? Re-Examining Bayley’s Blueprint for Police Reform. In short, we agree on the necessity of reflexivity within policing research and the area of evidence-based policing more specifically, but also see this reply as an opportunity to clarify some misconceptions around evidence-based policing and what it means to be “evidence-based.” More specifically, we touch upon the flexibility of evidence-based policing to be implemented in tandem with other reform approaches, the value of experiential knowledge and qualitative methods within evidence-based policing, and the confounding of evidence and evidence-based. We conclude on the point of reflexivity and put out a call for follow-up studies that examine the implications of evaluated police practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Policing
• reform
• evidence-based policing
• reflexivity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jacek Koziarski

Jacek Koziarski is a PhD Candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Western Ontario, Managing Editor of Police Practice and Research, a Research Associate for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing, a Research Fellow with the Saskatoon Police Service, and an Independent Research Consultant. Jacek’s research centers on various aspects of policing, with a particular focus on police interactions with persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI). Another line of inquiry for his work centers around examining the spatial and temporal patterns of both crime and non-crime-related issues (e.g., police-PwPMI interactions, missing persons, etc.).

Laura Huey

Dr. Laura Huey is Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario, Editor of Police Practice & Research, Chair of the Working Group on Mental Health and Policing of the Royal Society of Canada, Vice Chair of the American Society of Criminologists’ Division of Policing and the former Executive Director of the Canadian Society of Evidence Based Policing. She is also a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada and a Senior Research Fellow with the National Police Foundation.