ABSTRACT
Evidence-based policing encourages police to use tested strategies and methods to improve crime prevention, community engagement, and internal management. Police departments acquire new knowledge and the analytical skills needed to conduct their own studies that enhance their capacity to address a variety of pressing problems. Productive research partnerships with academics can facilitate and enrich the adoption of evidence-based policing in law enforcement agencies. However, most academic–police practitioner research partnerships are carried out as part of episodic research projects limited to the analysis of a particular problem and/or evaluation of an implemented program. These traditional research collaborations can be limited due to trust, timeliness, and relevance issues. In this chapter, we examine how three non-traditional research partnerships—executive sessions, embedded criminologists, and police pracademics—have the potential to overcome the obstacles of traditional research partnerships and facilitate the implementation of evidence-based policing.
