ABSTRACT
If, as Sheptycki argues in Part I, it is necessary to question how scarce policing resources can be targeted, ‘where they can be expected to do the most good, or at least cause the least harm’, then a more reflexive and democratic dialogue over the substantive content of TOC threats is needed. As we have argued elsewhere (Edwards and Gill, 1998, 2002), social science has a key role to play in the facilitation of this dialogue, in eliciting the unintended consequences of policy responses to these threats and in shaping the knowledge-base for policy change and learning. The chapters in this section of the book address the frequent refrain that policy responses to TOC have been predicated more on assertion than rigorous research. They debate the insights and limitations of different research methods and how these can be used to interest policy-makers in different conceptualisations of TOC.
