Much of my academic work involves collaborating and consulting with police departments on quantitative problems. Most of the work I’ve done so far is very ad-hoc, through either the network of other academics asking for help on some project or police departments cold contacting me directly.

In an effort to advertise a bit more clearly, I wrote a page that describes examples of prior work I have done in collaboration with police departments. That discusses what I have previously done, but doesn’t describe why a police department would bother to collaborate with me or hire me as a consultant. In fact, it probably makes more sense to contact me for things no one has previously done before (including myself).

So here is a more general way to think about (from a police departments or criminal justice agencies perspective) whether it would be beneficial to reach out to me.

Should I do X?

So no one is going to be against different evidence based policing practices, but not all strategies make sense for all jurisdictions. For example, while focussed deterrence has been successfully applied in many different cities, if you do not have much of a gang violence problem it probably does not make sense to apply that strategy in your jurisdiction. Implementing any particular strategy should take into consideration the cost as well as the potential benefits of the program.

Should I do X may involve more open ended questions. I’ve previously conducted in person training for crime analysts that goes over various evidence based practices. It also may involve something more specific, such as should I redistrict my police beats? Or I have a theft-from-vehicle problem, what strategies should I implement to reduce them?

I can suggest strategies to implement, or conduct cost-benefit analysis as to whether a specific program is worth it for your jurisdiction.

I want to do X, how do I do it?

This is actually the best scenario for me. It is much easier to design a program up front that allows a police department to evaluate its efficacy (such as designing a randomized trial and collecting key measures). I also enjoy tackling some of the nitty-gritty problems of implementing particular strategies more efficiently or developing predictive instruments.

So you want to do hotspots policing? What strategies do you want to do at the hotspots? How many hotspots do you want to target? Those are examples of where it would make sense to collaborate with me. Pretty much all police departments should be doing some type of hot spots policing strategy, but depending on your particular problems (and budget constraints), it will change how you do your hot spots. No budget doesn’t mean you can’t do anything — many strategies can be implemented by shifting your current resources around in particular ways, as opposed to paying for a special unit.

If you are a police department at this stage I can often help identify potential grant funding sources, such as the Smart Policing grants, that can be used to pay for particular elements of the strategy (that have a research component).

I’ve done X, should I continue to do it?

Have you done something innovative and want to see if it was effective? Or are you putting a bunch of money into some strategy and are skeptical it works? It is always preferable to design a study up front, but often you can conduct pretty effective post-hoc analysis using quasi-experimental methods to see if some crime reduction strategy works.

If I don’t think you can do a fair evaluation I will say so. For example I don’t think you can do a fair evaluation of chronic offender strategies that use officer intel with matching methods. In that case I would suggest how you can do an experiment going forward to evaluate the efficacy of the program.

Mutual Benefits of Academic-Practitioner Collaboration

Often I collaborate with police departments pro bono — which you may ask what is in it for me then? As an academic I get evaluated mostly by my research productivity, which involves writing peer reviewed papers and getting research grants. So money is not the main factor from my perspective. It is typically easier to write papers about innovative problems or programs. If it involves applying for a grant (on a project I am interested in) I will volunteer my services to help write the grant and design the study.

I could go through my career writing papers without collaborating with police departments. But my work with police departments is more meaningful. It is not zero-sum, I tend to get better ideas when understanding specific agencies problems.

So get in touch if you think I can help your agency!