NCJ Number
191813
Journal
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 38 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2001 Pages: 387-415
Date Published
2001
Length
29 pages
Annotation
This article explores the medical model of police research and advances an argument about how the research agenda in policing should be expanded.
Abstract
The past two decades have seen a new model of research dominate the study of policing. Exemplified by the domestic violence experiments funded by the National Institute of Justice, this model of research sought to demonstrate what works in policing in the same way that the medical community demonstrates what works in medicine. It marshals the randomized experiment to understand how police can reduce crime. It is a model used increasingly throughout the field of criminal justice. This type of research has helped advance knowledge about policing in many ways. But modeling police research solely on the experimental research method could lead the field astray. Experimental research produces instrumental knowledge, or knowledge about the best means to a given end. Police will clearly benefit from instrumental knowledge such as that produced through experiments. But they will also benefit from better forms of practical reasoning, including better interpretations of ambiguous values and better ideas about how trade-offs among values should be made--something research can help to develop by moving beyond the medical research paradigm. Knowledge about policing should look more like legal knowledge than medical knowledge. The problem of applying the medical model to police research instead of a legalistic approach is that ideals like justice and retribution, as well as many other values that are distinct from crime prevention, do and should hold considerable weight in police agencies. In policing, the continuing importance of multiple values derives in part from the type of institution it is, a public institution that wields the State’s monopoly on force. A central problem facing police is how to apply and weigh the ambiguous and conflicting considerations of equity, liberty and safety. The model of legal inquiry is at least as relevant for police research as the model of experimental research in medicine: policing after all is a legal institution. Some part of this knowledge has already been developing in the legal world through decisions about the constitutionality of different police practices. This article proposes that such inquiry needs to be extended further into the operation of police departments. Notes, references