European Journal of Policing Studies

Article

Organisational learning from field research in policing: How police can improve policy and practice by implementing randomised controlled trials

Keywords Policing, Randomised Controlled Field Trial, Organisational Learning, Police Reform, Evidence Based Policing
Authors Laura Bedford en Peter Neyroud
DOI
Author's information

Laura Bedford
Dr Laura Bedford is lecturer in the School of Justice at the Queensland University of Technology. She holds a PhD in Criminology and has over 25 years’ experience in social and economic policy research and advocacy. Over the past two years, Laura has been employed by the Queensland Police Service to lead a randomised controlled field trial of mobile technology on the policing frontline (corresp: laura.bedford@qut.edu.au).

Peter Neyroud
Dr. Peter Neyroud is a Lecturer in Evidence-based policing in the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge. A police officer for more than 30 years, he was Chief Constable of Thames Valley and CEO of the National Policing Improvement Agency (as CEO). He is the Co-Chair of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Coordinating Group.
  • Abstract

      Organisational Learning (OL) perspectives suggest that all organisations use evidence to adapt and change their policies and practices. The special case of how police organisations adapt and change in response to experiences with the implementation of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) is, however, not well understood in the extant literature. The value of policing RCTs may, on the one hand, lie in their ability to provide hard evidence or results of ‘what works’ in policing. On the other hand, RCTs may be powerful change processes which serve to generate OL and potential service improvements even in the absence of results. This paper presents an analysis of the results of in-depth interviews conducted in a policing organisation that has implemented a RCT. Using an integrated perspective of OL, we show that processes related to the experience with implementing a RCT may have a specific potential to leverage organisational change.

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