The Effect of Data, Data Visualizations, and Information Provision on Police Leader Decision-Making: Results from a Multi-Armed Experimental Survey of Police Leaders

• In Event: Experimental Methods in Criminology (Sponsored by the Division of Experimental Criminology)

Abstract

Police leaders’ decision-making can impact the lives of officers and community members daily. However, little is known as to whether various data visuals and/or information provision sways police leaders’ interpretation of crime problems and willingness to implement crime control/prevention strategies. The present study offers findings from a multi-armed survey experiment from a sample of 1,197 police leaders assessing whether different data structures, visualizations, and information impact police leader’s (Lieutenant and above) willingness to make strategic crime prevention changes. Findings show that in some experimental conditions, police leaders accurately identified jurisdictional crime trends and high-crime areas based on the data visualizations randomly assigned. However, in other cases, police leaders were not significantly more likely to respond to crime problems with empirically promising evidence-based practices. Our findings have important policy implications for police leaders, data analysts, and police researchers, highlighting that police leaders may make more informed and evidence-based decisions depending on the data visualizations and information at hand. We also discuss implications for evidence-based policing.

Authors

• Renee Mitchell, American Society of Evidence-Based Policing

• Hunter Boehme, University of South Carolina

• Cannon Fulmer, Columbia (SC) Police Department