ABSTRACT

Policing has become an important area of innovation in criminology and in practice over the past few decades. In methodology, policing has emerged as a key area of evidencebased policy in criminal justice (Lum, Koper, and Telep 2011; Sherman 1998; Weisburd and Neyroud 2011), and the police have become one of the most open agents of the criminal justice system to new ideas and new approaches (Weisburd and Braga 2006). The science of policing has advanced greatly, and there is now much evidence not only that the police can be effective (National Research Council 2004; Weisburd and Eck 2004) but also that policing and police data can play a role in advancing scientific understanding of crime and the relationships between the community and criminal justice (e.g., Gill et al. 2014; Telep and Weisburd 2012; Tyler 2011; Weisburd, Groff, and Yang 2012).