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Albanese: National Academy of Science policing report advises evidence-based approach

August 28, 2021

By David Slipher

Jay Albanese, professor of criminal justice in the Wilder School, recently served as one of six external reviewers from six countries for the National Academy of Sciences report, Policing to Promote the Rule of Law and Protect the Population: An Evidence-based Approach. In the report, the first of a planned five-part series, academics explore how sharing effective policing policies in the northern hemisphere can have reformative impacts for southern hemisphere governments.

The authors of the report bring statistical evidence gathered from six continents to address a “global crime harm index” and redefine public threats in a way that is more consistent across nations. Doing so, according to the authors, will help set more normative measures to benchmark and demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed solutions.

“The report includes several recommendations that have the potential for dramatically changing the way to evaluate police work,” said Albanese. “For example, an evidenced-based assessment of police training modules is proposed, as is establishing ‘a model crime reporting system for violent crimes and the identification of geographic concentrations of harm from crime and disorder to strengthen understanding of both crime and how officers are responding to crime across countries’.”

The authors also recommend the establishment of a “world-wide, open access registry of police research” to further bolster evidence-based policing best practices. The full report is available at no charge via The National Academies Press.