Abstract

This paper presents a ‘third order reflection’ on the practices and limitations of police research in a case study of the moral economy of a police gun-crime panic. It approaches the questions ‘what is police research good for?’ and ‘what matters in policing?’ through a critique of police-oriented, evidence-based police (EBP) research. The paper suggests that partnerships between police and academics are structured by performance metrics and the rhetoric of New Public Management. Both academics and police are enveloped in the ‘politics of numbers’ and thereby struggle to overcome a narrow outlook. Ironically, evidence-based policing research produces evidence of a different kind, having to do with police practices that reveal the assumptive world of the police métier and thereby help to generate the foundations of third order reflection and critique. Describing a gun-crime panic in a specific time and place, and relating it to the broader moral economy of policing governance of which it is a part, is a practical demonstration of how to take EBP police research far beyond its limitations to the more fertile grounds of third order reflection.