Using Implementation Science to Improve Evidence-Based Policing: An Introduction for Researchers and Practitioners

• In Event: Evaluating CJ Interventions: Facial Recognition, Risk Assessment, and Implementation Science

Abstract

As “the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice,” implementation science (IS) offers the potential to translate effective innovations in policing across agencies with fidelity and sustainability. Despite this potential, and its widespread use in adjacent fields facing similar challenges, implementation science remains almost completely unstudied and unutilized in police settings. To fill these gaps in research and practice, this presentation provides an orientation to IS for police researchers. It recounts EBP’s historical roots in an evidence-based approach to health care, and demonstrates the commonalities that make IS as natural to policing as medicine. It adapts a conceptual model of IS to policing, presents two well-developed frameworks, and introduces three types of hybrid implementation/effectiveness trials suitable for use in dynamic police settings. It then highlights the importance of the de-implementation of substandard or problematic practices as a key aspect of IS. It concludes by discussing how police practices that fully embrace evidence will nonetheless be guided by contestable values and norms, and how IS provides a way to address this concern. The paper provides research and practice agendas for integrating IS into experimental and evaluation designs in policing.

Authors

• Brandon del Pozo, Brown University

• Steven Belenko, Temple University

• Ekaterina Pivovarova, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

• Bradley Ray, RTI International

• Kailtin Fatima Martins, Rhode Island Hospital

• Faye Taxman, George Mason University