Author Description

What Works in Policing provides state-of-the-art information about the usefulness of various police practices and strategies. Designed for graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary policing, this text covers general police strategies such as mobile patrol, emergency response, and community policing. It focuses on particular crime problems such as habitual offenders and spouse assaults, and examines the strategies police have devised to control such criminal acts. The text consists of articles of evaluation research, including several famous studies that have been conducted over the past 30 years. By providing actual research studies, this text gives students the opportunity to consider the quality and adequacy of contemporary social science research. The text allows students to discuss whether research has been done well and to explore the issues of research design and method. Each chapter begins with a short essay discussing the strategic and evaluation context of the reprinted study. The text concludes with a short chapter discussing evaluation research and how to judge whether the research is good enough to accept. It also explores the integral role of police practitioners and social scientists. What Works in Policing not only explores the efficiency of contemporary policing, it reveals the strengths and weaknesses of our knowledge about the police.