ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author tries to bring together the evidence and trends he has reviewed so far in order to discuss the place of ‘planning’ in policing and the extent to which the rational collection and assessment of evidence can stand as a model for assessing what the police do and how well they do it. He looks at some of the obstacles to introducing rational planning and by implication a whole variety of innovations and changes into policing. Policing by objectives is a thorough-going attempt to apply a rational/empirical approach to any, or all aspects of a force’s activity. It is an American import and has been adopted wholesale as an approach to thinking about and organising policing activity in two forces: the Metropolitan Police and Northamptonshire. Like policing by objectives, the problem-oriented approach to policing has been more extensively developed and used in the United States than in Britain.
