Evidence-based policing as a disruptive innovation

Abstract

Evidence-based policing (EBP) is, arguably, one of the biggest contemporary watersheds in the history of policing (see Dunham and Alpert, 2015; Lum and Koper, 2015). In the language of Christensen’s (1997) theory of disruptive innovation, EBP is a policing knowledge process that is part of the broader digital reform movement across the world (Helbing, 2015), dislodging the incumbent craft-based mode of doing police business. The dislodging of this model – which relies on learning largely based on knowledge acquired through on-the-job, handson experience of police work – started over three decades ago with the onset of the professional era in policing (see Kelling and Moore, 1989). Yet the onset of EBP during the mid-1990s created new opportunities for the professionalisation of police, where scientific evidence started to be created by police and was placed directly in the hands of police and police policymakers. The establishment of police research collectives in the late 1970s (e.g., U.S. Police Executive Research Forum and Home Office Police Research Group), the proliferation of problemoriented policing starting in the early 1990s (see Scott, this volume), followed by the release of the U.S. report titled What Works, What Doesn’t and What’s Promising (Sherman et al., 1997), pinpoints the start of the EBP movement. Sherman et al.’s report arguably offered the first comprehensive review of the best available scientific evidence to guide criminal justice policy and practice, including policing. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and EBP continues on an upward trajectory and is an important catalyst in the dislodging of the incumbent craft model of policing.