Roundtable: Moving the Needle: NIJ's LEADS Agencies Program

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Too often in police organizations, data and analysis are used in routine ways and research is just something you do when you get a grant. This narrows the scope of the questions answered, limits exploration to projects that correspond to funding priorities, and often requires practitioners to partner with external researchers who have the funding and skills to conduct the research. Through the Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) Agencies program, the National Institute of Justice is attempting to shift the paradigm so that research becomes something police do when they have a question. By empowering law enforcement to use data, analysis, and research to answer their own questions, the program aims to overcome many of the persistent limitations of research-practitioner partnerships, including the lag time between identification of research priorities and the production of results and limited dissemination of results to the practitioner community. The program is specifically aimed at supporting agencies of all sizes, including mid-sized and smaller agencies that often lack internal analytic capacity and are rarely represented in policing research due to sample size limitations. This roundtable will explore the benefits and challenges of this promising new effort to advance the police profession through science.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII: Roundtable Sessions

Division of Special Interest

• Divisions of Special Interest / Division of Policing

Chair

• Maureen McGough, National Institute of Justice

Discussants

• Geoffrey Alpert, University of South Carolina

• Gary Cordner, National Institute of Justice

• Ryan Keck, Department of Public Safety Standards and Training- Center for Policing Excellence

• Gregory Mullen, Charleston Police Department

• Luther Reynolds, Montgomery County Police Department

• John Riegert, Albany Crime Analysis Center