Are federal security efforts evidence-based?

Abstract

Over the last few decades, local law enforcement agencies have become more receptive to incorporating research, evaluation, and analysis into their daily work, a concept known as “evidence-based policing.” Federal law enforcement and security agencies, in contrast, have rarely been evaluated and are traditionally much less open to input and analysis from outside researchers. Recently, leaders in the Federal Protective Service (FPS) have proactively pursued an evidence-based approach, looking to determine how research might apply to their mission and how partnerships with researchers can benefit their agency. In this study, we report on the first comprehensive “evidence assessment” of the deployment portfolio of the FPS. An evidence assessment is a translational criminology method which analyzes an agency’s practices and policies to ascertain how they align with existing crime prevention research. Our findings indicate that while some of FPS’s countermeasures are grounded in promising crime prevention measures, others are more uncertain. It is also unclear how some prevention strategies (such as guards and patrol) are used to optimize their effectiveness in evidence-based ways.