Knowing from Within

Introduction

The need for knowledgeable and effective police services across the globe is more urgent than ever. This is so, not only because Western police services are politically challenged to keep up with knowledge society in general, but also because an intensification of new and ever more complex police responsibilities is occurring. In Europe, the increased immigration from war-torn countries has introduced resource allocations to border patrol, and the seemingly ever-increasing threat from terrorism brings along a new focus on the protection of vulnerable targets. Thus, a new police reality seems to be emerging. A police reality, where police services become police forces and crime prevention turns into target protection. Even though crime in general is decreasing, the threat from organised and serious crime continues to emerge, along with calls for more comprehensive policing strategies.

Meanwhile, the public’s demand for service and quality in police work is increasing. Indeed, police services are requested to navigate in an ever more challenging and complex safety and security landscape. In this paper, we are concerned with the conceptual scope and methodological practice of police research as a valuable component in creating knowledgeable police services and police practices. We are mainly driven by the question: How can scholarly knowledge be of value in order for the police service to develop its practices and legitimacy in the complex safety and security landscape?

In other words, we are concerned with the exploration and positioning of scholarly knowledge within police organisations, notoriously known for their knowledge-resistance. The backdrop of the article is a fundamental concern that police organisations oversee vital complexities of policing in a democratic society. The promise of ‘applying’ evidence-based research findings in practice via top-down initiatives in forms of ‘guidelines for actions’ seems to be dismissive of the extent and power of informal dynamics within the police. We argue that there is a need for a close and engaged collaboration between research and practice, where the dichotomy consisting of respective ‘do-ers’ and ‘knowers’ is dissolved as a means of ensuring up-to-date and high-quality police services with a high degree of accountability and legitimacy.

To reach an understanding of this, it is necessary to discuss and elaborate on a recent critique of a tendency in Nordic police research to be colonised by an audit-approach (as reflected in evidence-based policing, for example), in measuring the effectiveness of single police initiatives, and thereby neglecting in-depth qualitative and critical research of more subtle and complex matters in policing (Holmberg, 2014).

The tendency to pursue a narrow understanding of evidence production for “what works,” puts police research as a discipline at risk, not only of ignoring other knowledge-resources in academia and practice, but also of widening the gap between the two spheres rather than integrating them in the form of a knowing police force.

To demonstrate what we identify as the main challenges of this gap, we root our discussion in the present situation of the Danish police and our own experience, as we are all present or former in-house qualitative researchers with ambitions to empower knowledge-based changes from within the organisation.

From this position, we call for a nuancing of police research, its role and its inherent integrity through an elaboration of what we suggest as embedded police research (EPR). With this term, we wish to contribute to the debate amongst police researchers, particularly those concerned that a close and embedded collaboration between researchers and the police organisation should be considered distrustful and discouraged (Davies, 2016; Holmberg, 2014, 2015). Instead of increasing distance between police and research, as suggested by Holmberg (2014, 2015), we argue that police research should move even closer to the complex realities and challenges of integrating research-knowledge and practice in police organisations.

This embeddedness involves a critical-constructive research position in relation to the police organisation, its practices, and the interplay of these practices with the surrounding society. Furthermore, we argue that scholars should contribute actively to changes of policing, by taking on the role of cultivators and educators in empowering and enabling knowledgeable policing from within the organisation.

In suggesting EPR, we point to the necessities, potentials, and delicacies of doing research with police, communicated within the range of existing understandings and practices, to critically mirror the status quo and spur actual change across the police organisation, its functions and hierarchy. As such, EPR is not restricted to a certain paradigm, approach or epistemology; it is an invitation meant for both researchers and practitioners to welcome and integrate scholarly knowledge through the pursuit of embeddedness. This means that both police practitioners and researchers must be willing to stretch themselves to the edges of their comfort zones and humbly meet at the uncomfortable conjunctions of a broadened spectrum of research-informed change.

Finally, we propose EPR as a set of guiding principles that accelerate the move towards knowledgeable policing, by widening our focus from ‘what works’ when choosing actions and priorities in specific police practices, to also include underlying conditions and subtle dynamics of ‘why it works’, ‘what may potentially also work’, ‘how do we make this work’ and thus a focus on ‘what matters to police organisations’.

In the following we will briefly outline the rise of police research and how the instrumental rationale of EBP has taken the lead before presenting police research in a Scandinavian perspective, particularly within a Danish setting. Against this backdrop, we discuss specific characteristics of police organisations in relation to change and knowledge, the challenges and shortcomings of EBP, and how EPR may serve to mend these, as well as providing valuable insights in its own right. We then explore the role of the embedded researcher, addressing methodological concerns of in-depth engagement within social science and humanities as well as the implications and possibilities of the embedded police researcher. Finally, we suggest the embedded researcher as a critical and constructive friend to the organisation, in our bid as a step towards creating and supporting knowledgeable police organisations.

The rise of police research

The transition of Western police services taking place in recent years, from being organised around local crime, to dealing with global, abstract and highly complex crime-patterns and interventions, has increasingly pushed for a move towards a knowing organisation (Choo, 1996). As such, a knowing police service is one that systematically enables sense-making of events, knowledge creation and informed decision-making with the aim of optimising police services. In this vein, scholarly knowledge plays an increasing role, both in penetrating the walls of the notoriously closed and self-reliant police organisations, to integrating research-based knowledge and collaborating in the knowledge-creating process with external experts as cross-disciplinary experts, in order to leverage knowledge and analytical skills of police professionals (e.g. Gundhus, Hellesø-Knutsen, & Wathne, 2010; Holmberg, 2014).

With this ambition of creating knowing police services comes the dramatic resurfacing of the quest for police practices that are informed by research. As we now argue, however, the current demand for police research has an instrumental heritage, focusing rather narrowly on studies of ‘what works’, a focus that is reproduced by the popular regime of Evidence-based Policing (EBP) and its claim of what counts as evidence for practice (Davies, 2016; Punch, 2015).

Research-based practices have a long history in policing, at least dating back to the legitimacy crisis in the late 1960’s, at which point US police had to justify and innovate their traditional services that had proved inefficient and outdated (Weisburd & Braga, 2006). Especially in the US and the UK, police researchers subsequently uncovered several police practices as questionable and out of sync with societal laws and norms, and documented actual police misconduct (Hellesø-Knutsen, 2010; Punch, 2015). Moreover, during the 1980s and 1990s, traditional law enforcement methods proved unable to impact a rising crime curve (Bayley, 1994).

As such, an instrumental rationale emerged within criminological and police research, focusing on ‘what works’, with the purpose of supporting the development of scientific, innovative and modern policing strategies and methods (often referred to as smart policing¹1.  Smart policing can be viewed as an overall category for those policing strategies, which hold the ambition to spend resources intelligently and efficiently. The Bureau of Justice Assistance (US) has in 2012 launched The Smart Policing Initiative (SPI), which promotes smart policing as: “…a strategic approach that brings more “science” into police operations by leveraging innovative applications of analysis, technology, and evidence-based practices”. ). This rationale suited political incentives of creating modern policing that would answer the challenges of modern society, including the changes within the criminal environment and the public’s demand for service (see e.g. Manning, 2008; Weisburd & Braga, 2006).

The instrumental rationale is also evident in the contributions from hard sciences in terms of the provision of policing technologies, such as bulletproof vests, fingerprint- and DNA technologies, surveillance technologies, automatic number plate readers, etc. (Weisburd & Neyroud, 2011). Thus, the path was already made for the smooth arrival of EBP, which has now internationally evolved into an elaborate policing paradigm shift and government program as “a law-enforcement perspective and philosophy that implicates the use of research, evaluation, analysis, and scientific processes in law-enforcement decision making” (Lum & Koper, 2014: 1).

Inherited from healthcare, and due to its fit with political-economic rationales of clear-variable performance measures and intervention strategies, the evidence-based practice approach has been translated into a wide area of public sector services, including policing. While the aim of evidence-based medicine is to ensure that the offered treatment is scientifically proven to be effective, and reflects the effort to assign treatment based on a neutral and objective fundament, government agencies worldwide and across services have accepted this approach as the gold standard within medicine (Howick, 2011; Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, & Richardson, 1996). Thus, the evidence-based paradigm reflects an audit rationale of randomised control trials, experimental methods and quantitative data.

Several critiques have been raised, not towards EBP per se, but towards the “dangers of narrowness” it encompasses (Sparrow, 2015: 20) as a result of too narrow a focus on crime control (van Dijk, Hoogewoning, & Punch, 2016), as well as quantitative evaluations of specific police practices (and thus its proponents) recognising only a narrow scope of what would count as ‘evidence’ (Ibid.; Holmberg, 2015).

While EBP has no doubt been crucial in the developments and successes of, e.g. crime prevention in relation to hotspot policing, it is symptomatic of the rather narrow instrumental research tradition in police research. Its heritage from a healthcare setting, its appeal to strategic decision-makers, and its reliance on quantitative accountability, results in a colonising of knowledge as its popularity spreads, thereby claiming a very particular form of knowledge while ignoring others which are imperative in capturing the complexities of policing as a whole.

This awareness is even more pressing in the face of the challenges for police research described by Holmberg (2014, 2015), where the field is moving towards agency-defined and -controlled research. This would potentially result in the extinction of a healthy, critical research production and environment, across a diverse range of internal and external knowledge disciplines. Before returning to a critique of the evidence-based paradigm in police research, we will briefly dwell on the role and status of scholarly police research in the Scandinavian countries.

Not all that counts is countable: Blind spots of the audit regime

Our main concern in terms of the institutional bias towards evidence-based policing is not the seemingly quantitative preference within police research, as a reasonable amount of police research is in fact qualitative in nature. Our worry is the general organisational attitude towards the value and instrumental role of knowledge and research as such. In the wake of NPM, police organisations have, generally speaking, become characterised by a striving towards cost-efficiency, and towards the ‘objective’ and strategic allocation of limited resources (Ratcliffe, 2008). If research is considered valuable from within police organisations in order to succeed in this endeavour, it should (according to proponents of this tendency) maximise the efficiency of policing, and contribute with readymade quick fixes for the organisation. Thus, the virtues of EBP fit perfectly well with the current logic of police organisations, since it promises knowledge on “what works” and thus on what is most cost-efficient. This is not to say, however, that evidence-based research is broadly applied and used in order to make informed decisions within police organisations. There is still a long way to go in order to make even qualitative research a natural component of police practices. However, the quantitative, efficiency-oriented and number-based logic of evidence-based police research appeals intuitively to the current political environment and (therefore) the strategic preferences of police organisations.

So, even though police organisations formally welcome the social sciences, there is no actual openness towards their qualitative component. Thus, the following critique of the audit regime and of evidence-based police research mirrors our critique of the way in which police organisations tend to parse out the value of qualitative approaches, and how they lack enough engagement with the researchers to actually integrate learning in their practices.

In this respect, what counts as ‘good evidence’ in present research-based practices reflects a dominant, but narrow understanding of what represents valid and applicable research. Some proponents of quantitative research have argued that qualitative research is invalid because of the lack of standard means of assuring validity; a critique which is fundamentally ignorant of the fact that qualitative research has a different focus on issues that are better explained by pursuing questions of why and how than of how many and how much (Denzin, 2009; Maxwell, 1992). As such, studies of EBP seem to ignore that standards have indeed been developed on the premise of validating qualitative ‘evidence´, and that policing involves research phenomena, not least social matters, that are very different from those of e.g., medicine.

An obvious demonstration of the tautological tendency of EBP, is its challenge of actually transferring knowledge into practice, while failing to produce useful knowledge about why this happens and how to change the patterns. Despite the continuous growth in research on ‘what works in policing’ over recent decades, implementation of this knowledge in practice is still pending. Even Sherman (2013: 39) states: “(…) there has been a massive growth of policing knowledge over the levels in 1975. Equally important is a second conclusion: there has been less progress in using knowledge than in generating it.” Thus, how can police research contribute to creating a knowing police service if it merely exists as research reports and academic papers?

In emphasising the point that blurring boundaries between outside and inside researcher positions poses a risk of compromising the trustworthiness of police research (because of the entanglement in narrow policy and interests), Davies (2016) raises the point that the majority of innovations occurring in police research come from outside researchers, not from inside reformatory forces (Bayley, 2015). What this argument misses out on, however, is how police researchers also point to the fact that such seemingly extensive innovations in reality were implemented with great inertia and pseudo-implementation since police practitioners stuck to ‘business as usual’ (Ashby, Irving, & Longley, 2007; Bayley 2016; Weisburd & Braga, 2006).

The literature on knowledge-resistance in organisations is too extensive to be covered in this discussion. However, one element is important to emphasise: a sole instrumental focus on ‘what works’ misses out on crucial aspects of ‘what matters’ in policing, as well as how we really make it matter and, as such, fails to understand the broader policing landscape (van Dijk et al., 2016). Policing is a complex endeavour, and everyone who has conducted police research must moreover recognise that this activity is far from straightforward, either. Such elements as the lack of professionalisation of police work and a high degree of autonomy and discretionary judgment amongst police officers make it difficult to even map and describe police work in its most basic forms. In addition, there is a wide gap between formal and informal elements within the police organisation (Bjørkelo & Gundhus, 2015), various occupational cultures dominate certain practices, and police work is in some areas extremely detailed and even rigidly regulated, whereas in other areas decisions and interpretations are up to the individual officer (Granér & Kronkvist, 2014). Police research and police management are therefore endeavours that are challenged by the fact that on one hand the police are organised around a rigid hierarchy with a clear chain of command, and on the other hand the discretionary space of frontline policing is difficult to backtrack or supervise (Bjørkelo & Gundhus, 2015).

As a holistic activity, policing is conducted in the frame of a politically governed public institution which is deeply dependent on legitimacy and public support. Decisions on policing – strategies, methods and tactics for police work – can therefore not be based entirely on ‘what works’. As pointed out by Sherman et al. (2014), we have an abundance of studies on hotspot policing, but few studies on how to actually make hotspot patrolling happen in police organisations. Such research seems necessary to help the police understand their own organisation and practices, as this is a prerequisite for knowledge implementation, improvements and innovative changes. Furthermore, it might be that, for example, automatic number plate recognition and CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television – video surveillance) is a very helpful tool for the police in tracking offenders and traffic violators, but what consequences and implications do these measures have in a broader societal context in relation to, e.g. privacy, public trust, social interaction and the way that police work is carried out, and how police officers meet the public? Or as van Dijk et al. (2016:33) puts it, “(we) should (…) avoid capture by the narrow crime control proponents but also raise our sights to examine the broader societal perspectives in order to discern the shifting nature of policing in postmodern society”.

It is therefore a tricky, but crucial task for police researchers to explain and comprehend what is actually going on within the police, and how police work is actually carried out in ways that really matter – or would matter – to a complex set of stakeholders, including the general public. In order to improve future police practices, as promised by EBP, the existing ones must be taken into account, since police practitioners tend to fall back on their existing ‘know-how’ even if they claim to follow newest, best practices (Weisburd & Braga, 2006). As a consequence, police research must rely on thorough analysis of a variety of issues in policing, including more subtle and implicit elements of culture, power relations, rationales, areas of (in)competence, etc. As a saying goes among the Danish police officers: “Nothing is what it seems to be” within the sphere of police organisations, something you realise as you scratch the surface hard enough (e.g. Hartmann, 2014; Hestehave, forthcoming). This underlines the need for up-close qualitative research, such as ethnographic fieldwork (Finstad, 2000).

Above, we have critically discussed the EPB approach to police research and the sort of knowledge considered relevant and applicable from within the police as being, i.e. narrow and too strictly focused on quantitative and detached virtues. In the following, we will present what we mean by embedded police research (EPR), and we will list our affirmative arguments for why we believe EPR is a valuable supplement to the ruling paradigm in order to enable knowledgeable policing.

Embedded Police Research

An extensive methodological literature addresses various types of research and researcher positions within the social science and humanities and within police research (see e.g. Brunger, Tong, & Martin, 2016; Gundhus et al. 2010; Cockbain & Knutsson, 2015; Bradley & Nixon 2009). We are not, however, concerned in this context with how our understanding of EPR equals or differentiates itself from other ‘applied’ forms of research, where contributing to change is a core element, such as action research (Flyvbjerg, 2001) or engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007). Instead, we will unfold the concept of EPR on its own terms, derived from (a) policing as a subject matter, which proposes specific inherent conditions for the choice of research methods, and (b) the police organisation, which provides particular concerns for the researcher. In the following, we will present in more detail what we mean by EPR, and argue why this serves as a good approach when introducing research into knowledge-resistant organisations like the police.

EPR is research conducted as close to the operational world of policing as possible, whilst still upholding a critical analytical distance. It does not only promote deep insight into specific details of police practice, but rather requires it. As such, EPR has its main purpose of obtaining close acquaintance with the empirical setting in which we conduct our study, to again produce reliable and trustworthy scientific knowledge on policing as an activity, and the police organisation as the surrounding frame of this activity. In other words, embeddedness can indeed be crucial for producing sound research, not a hindrance. Embedded knowledge is of course in itself valuable, but it is also a precondition to enable and support the development of knowledgeable police services, which is the second purpose of EPR. Our argument is that the process of gaining deep insight through EPR requires a close collaboration with police practice, which becomes imperative in the process of ‘applying’ this research knowledge later.

In our view, when dealing with a profession such as policing, core insight into actual working conditions (formal and informal codes of conduct, cultures, mindsets, etc.), is important in order to frame the research so that it both speaks to and with the profession, as well as to and with other researchers. Non-embedded research would primarily speak about the profession to peer academics, but in order to obtain knowledge which can contribute to quality and ensure a professional police practice, we find it necessary that researchers interact closely with police professionals and remain attached to the everyday life of policing, rather than producing hit and run-research (Uggerhøj & Ebsen, 2014), and leaving the implementation to others. This calls for a researcher positioned within the police, as we elaborate in the following sections.

A frequently quoted scholar regarding researcher positions (Davies, 2016; Holgersson & Knutsson, 2012; Reiner & Newburn, 2008) is Brown (1996), who places police researchers in four categories: (1) inside insiders, who are police officers conducting police research, (2) outside insiders, who are police officers conducting research after having left the police service in the pursuit of an academic career (both categories can be referred to as ‘cross-overs’), (3) inside outsiders, who are civilians employed by the police or in official roles within the police, carrying out research for government departments or the like (the ones that can be referred to as ‘pracademics’), and (4) outside outsiders, who are independent academics not employed or commissioned by the police or other governmental bodies. Historically, police research has been carried out by outside outsiders, which is often the case with evidence-based police researchers. There are of course mixes within or extensions of these groups, for example police officers or academics employed by the police who carry out research in collaboration between the police and an independent university. Obviously, it is difficult to claim a ‘proper/ideal’ researcher role as there are methodological and ethical benefits and costs connected to all these positions, however, some issues seem more crucial than others when it comes to police research.

EPR is primarily situated within the first and third category as inside insiders or inside outsiders. This employment could be, for example, at a research department at police university colleges, or at research and development departments elsewhere within the police organisation. Below we will promote embedded research by developing the following two statements: (a) embeddedness does not equal entanglement, and (b) embeddedness supports access and enhances constructive changes within police organisations.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have discussed and presented a framework for embedded police research. Doing embedded research requires the researcher to work in close collaboration with the field; first of all to uncover the ideas, values, norms, and workings of the organisation, second of all to take on the active duty of implementing research knowledge back into the organisation, and third of all to challenge beliefs and practices as a critical and constructive friend in order to support the development of knowledgeable ways of working from within the organisation.

Our discussion of this subfield of police research is partly a response to a narrow focus in current police research on effectiveness and ’what works’. While assessment of effectiveness is important to ensure better policing, this does not provide answers on those relational and processual dynamics and contextual factors affecting the outcome of interventions and methods. The prerequisite for getting ‘what works’ to actually work in police organisations, is uncovering the notions and practicalities of the organisation that act as barriers. EPR can therefore play a key role in solving some of the challenges that have hampered the progress of EBP and other smart policing initiatives, even if this is only an added bonus of EPR.

Our presentation and discussion of EPR is also a response to the concern that police research has become too entangled in political and managerial agendas to maintain its free and critical ethos. EPR shares this concern, but tracing the failure of external reform to significantly impact actual police practice, we argue that it is important to address the issues that matter in policing, and for the police organisation to create a truly collaborative reform towards a knowledgeable police. It is also worth noting that EPR is a normative research pursuit. In a democratic society, policing cannot be anything it pleases. With the rise of terrorism, organised, and serious crime, politicians have bestowed the police with growing powers and competences. In this new safety and security landscape, the scholarly understanding of democratic institutions and tradition of social critique is an important part of ensuring the legitimacy of policing practices.

For some, the idea of embedded research entails the danger of the researcher going native. However, an inside research position should not in itself warrant suspicion. As it has been argued, a closeness and familiarity with the police organisation enables the research agenda, as it eases navigation in the game of politics and power, locates points and people of interest, and helps negotiate access and seeing past ceremonial veneer and stage acts. The outside researcher does not have home field advantage and may spend time getting through barriers and be ushered past real problems and critical voices. If inside research is in danger of going native, outside research may never get to the bottom of problems. The point is, of course, that there is no ideal position in police research. The proper scientific position is a question of directed, conscientious effort measured against the methodological and analytical standards of one’s science, not one’s point of departure.

One of the drawbacks of being an embedded researcher is admittedly the organisation’s lack of understanding and appreciation of the contribution of research to policing. As with any research, one’s results and recommendations may also run counter to the ambitions and ideas of decision-makers. However, embedded researchers have the advantage of being present in the organisation. Even if recommendations get lost in piles of papers on busy desks and locked in drawers, the researcher is still there, seeking out ways to channel the research into practice, building relationships with research ambassadors, taking part in work groups, shaping internal education, designing and evaluating interventions – all through the perspective and insights of research. Being an inside researcher also enables critique containing classified information to be relayed in confidential forums without rewriting it in such general terms that it may lose its conciseness and empirical reference and thereby its persuasiveness to the organisation.

By presenting a framework for embedded police research, it is our hope to nuance the scientific community’s understanding of what counts as ‘good’ knowledge, and by working within this framework it is our hope to decrease the distance between ‘doers’ and ‘knowers’ in policing. It is clear that police organisations of today face an increasingly complex and fluid landscape of, e.g. organised crime and terrorism. To address this challenge, police organisations must develop new ways of working and organising at a pace and level of skill that match those of its surroundings. This is no small challenge for an organisation known to deflect change and knowledge. As a critical and constructive friend, EPR is part of the process by igniting and enabling the necessary changes from within the organisation, through a combination of in-depth insight, critique, and close cooperation.