"The Challenge of Timeliness and Utility in Research and Evaluation" In The New Criminal Justice,
ed. Klofas, Hippie and McGarrell. Routledge, 2010, pages 128-131.
There was a time, perhaps until the end of the 1980s, when researchers could conduct their work
in police departments and depart with a cheery “Hope you buy the book!” But now practitioners in the
criminal justice field have grown too sophisticated to buy into this model of research or evaluation
model. Today, they want to know what is in it for them, during their term of office. At my first
presentation to the command staff of the Chicago Police Department describing plans to evaluate
their community policing initiative, a savvy district commander rose and made his fears clear: we
would get in his way and take up his time, and a book would appear five years later telling everyone
what he did wrong. He did not think this was a good idea. We agreed, but other models of researcher-
practitioner partnerships are a lot of work, and risky. There were advantages to wearing white lab
coats and insisting that we had to keep “hands off.”
Now it is necessary for evaluators to forge two-way relationships with their agency partners.
Evaluators need access and cooperation, and the agencies will demand some payback for that. They
have expectations about how research and evaluation can help them. What police administrators
expect is information that is timely and useful for them. This paper reflects on my experience in trying
to meet these twin expectations, in projects evaluating policing programs of all kinds, including
activities of undercover narcotics squads and department-wide reorganizations to do community
policing. My message is these are very difficult expectations to meet. Our practitioner partners may
need to develop a fuller understanding of the many important steps involved in conducting quality
research, and how these intersect with the very important criteria that the findings be timely and
useful.
ed. Klofas, Hippie and McGarrell. Routledge, 2010, pages 128-131.
There was a time, perhaps until the end of the 1980s, when researchers could conduct their work
in police departments and depart with a cheery “Hope you buy the book!” But now practitioners in the
criminal justice field have grown too sophisticated to buy into this model of research or evaluation
model. Today, they want to know what is in it for them, during their term of office. At my first
presentation to the command staff of the Chicago Police Department describing plans to evaluate
their community policing initiative, a savvy district commander rose and made his fears clear: we
would get in his way and take up his time, and a book would appear five years later telling everyone
what he did wrong. He did not think this was a good idea. We agreed, but other models of researcher-
practitioner partnerships are a lot of work, and risky. There were advantages to wearing white lab
coats and insisting that we had to keep “hands off.”
Now it is necessary for evaluators to forge two-way relationships with their agency partners.
Evaluators need access and cooperation, and the agencies will demand some payback for that. They
have expectations about how research and evaluation can help them. What police administrators
expect is information that is timely and useful for them. This paper reflects on my experience in trying
to meet these twin expectations, in projects evaluating policing programs of all kinds, including
activities of undercover narcotics squads and department-wide reorganizations to do community
policing. My message is these are very difficult expectations to meet. Our practitioner partners may
need to develop a fuller understanding of the many important steps involved in conducting quality
research, and how these intersect with the very important criteria that the findings be timely and
useful.
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Evaluation of CeaseFire-Chicago