The unrest that plagued American cities in the 1960s led to a crisis of confidence in several institutions, the police not least among them. Many urban riots were touched off by a police-citizen encounter, clear evidence of the symbolic position officers occupied in many communities. This crisis of confidence coincided with the rise of social science as a means to examine and improve organizations such as the police. The U.S. Department of Justice began sponsoring research efforts to determine whether and how the police could be reformed, and many academics lined up to provide their expertise.
In the 40 years since, police departments have tried various reforms, and many have invited researchers to examine their efforts. The goal of Police Innovations: Contrasting Perspectives is to assess eight of the most popular of these reforms: community policing, broken-windows policing, problem-oriented policing, pulling-levers policing, third-party policing, hot-spots policing, Compstat, and evidence-based policing. Each of these reforms gets two chapters, one written by an advocate, the other by a critic. Advocates typically assess the empirical record of a given reform positively and urge its continuation, albeit with some amendments. Critics, unsurprisingly, find less cause for celebration and outline the wellsprings of their more pessimistic reading. These detailed pro and con chapters are bracketed by an introduction and conclusion written by the co-editors.
The roster of contributors is a virtual who's who of police researchers, almost all of whom live in the United States; names such as Skogan, Mastrofski, Kennedy, Moore, and Kelling grace the table of contents. Each of the authors is engaged in detailed empirical research with police departments, so each speaks from a position of considerable expertise. In many cases, the authors are very closely tied to the reform in question: they have either birthed the innovation (e.g., Kelling and broken-windows policing) or studied it intensively for several years (e.g., Skogan and community policing).
The format of the book works well. Each author thoroughly reviews the empirical record and clearly explains the logic of the argument. Each chapter is reasonably concise and well-written. The decision to counterpose advocates and critics leaves the reader well-positioned to reach his or her own conclusion about the sensibility of a particular reform movement.
Despite their differences, the authors in these volumes operate from similar assumptions. They believe that the police can reduce crime, and that the police should be evaluated significantly in terms of whether they achieve that goal. The authors share an embrace of detailed research programs that aspire to high scientific standards, the better to determine the precise impact of the adoption of a particular police strategy. Indeed, many of the debates within the book focus upon just how conclusively one can declare that a reform has succeeded or failed.
And despite their differences, all of the reform movements share much. Each assumes that the police need to do more than simply respond to calls for service, but also to understand the larger context out of which crime and disorder problems emerge. All also presume that the police can and should engage in rational analysis to determine the nature of a given problem area and to construct the most sensible strategies to change its criminogenic nature. Further, each assumes that the police should adopt multiple such strategies and involve multiple players to help implement them. To see these reforms discussed together helps the reader understand clearly some of the hegemonic positions in contemporary police practice and research.
The emphasis on rational analysis is understandable and does help the reader to evaluate one reform versus another. Yet the discussion is thereby somewhat constricted. Police departments are viewed largely as presumptively rational organizations that can be compelled to behave in a sensible, scientific fashion. Left unaddressed, at least in any systematic fashion, are the political dynamics, both internal and external, that so deeply shape what the police do and how they represent themselves. If the police are resistant to one reform or another, it is largely dismissed as a historical relic rather than as a response to wider political currents. One of these currents, of course, involves race, about which there is surprisingly little mention in this volume, even though racial tensions accounted for much of the impetus for police reforms. Finally, one searches in vain for any reference to the consequential fact that this same period of police reform was accompanied by a fourfold increase in the rate of incarceration in the United States. Indeed, many of these police reforms arguably contributed significantly to the United States becoming the world's most punitive country, and arguably helped reduce the police's devotion to protecting civil liberties. If one expects from this volume a rumination on such wider impacts of police practice, one will experience disappointment.
However, if one accepts the more limited aims of this volume, it does provide much grist for the evaluative mill. Because of their institutional location—as the principal arm of the state's coercive force—the police will continue to prompt debate about their practices. Thoughtful such debate is always to be embraced, and for this, Policing Innovation is a welcome contribution.
