Rethinking Police Evaluation Research: Balancing “Zen” with the “Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”^*

Abstract

Over two decades the police have adopted more the trappings of science than its substance. Efforts to understand the police have taken queues from advocates of random controlled trials as the “gold standard” to judge the police, often ignoring the qualitative and symbolic roles and functions of the police. In an era emphasizing police legitimacy, revisiting Pirsig’s (1974) call for better linking broad theoretical discourse with practical application suggests rethinking police evaluative frameworks. Measuring all that the police do, without being driven singularly by deterrence ideas, can more clearly explore this important social institution. This paper argues for examining the social facilitation role of the police, acknowledging the subtleties of social context for policing, and improving implementation assessment of police interventions, which are often lacking today in police research. Linking “Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance” brings us closer to understanding how the police actually work and why it matters.

Keywords:

• Deterrence
• implementation assessment
• measurement
• police evaluation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

* Portions of this paper were originally presented at the University of Texas at Dallas, April, 2015. Hanks to Drs. Alex Piquero and Ineke Haen Marshall for helpful comments.

1 Sherman suggested that strategies associated with dealing with crime were watching, walling and wariness.

2 The ideas of “cool” or shifting temperatures in neighborhoods as part of a positive criminological agenda was provided in personal conversations with Marc Schuilenburg of the VU University Amsterdam and also from his edited work, Schuilenburg et al. (2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jack R. Greene

Jack R. Greene is Professor Emeritus in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, where he served as dean (1999–2008). Recognized as a leading scholar in the field of policing, Greene has published 6 books, a 2 volume Encyclopedia of Police Science, and over 150 research articles, book chapters, research reports and policy papers on matters of policing in the US and internationally.

Dr. Greene is a Fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and has been a consultant to major police and governmental agencies throughout his career. For 9 years, he was a Commissioner on the Commission for the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), the premiere national police accreditation body in the US. appointed by the Police Executive Research Forum, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the National Sheriff’s Association.

Greene has written widely on matters of police service delivery, community approaches to policing, crime prevention, police management and ethics. More recently his scholarship focuses on the strategic and practical problems the police encounter in building community legitimacy, preserving human rights and in taking on a new security role in an era of terrorism. He has also written on the need to broaden the conceptual and methodological lenses by which the police and police are framed and evaluated.