Evidence Based Policing
Elizabeth Tucker
Criminal Justice
July 18, 2010
Clinton Miller
Evidence Based Policing
Evidence based policing (EBP) is the use of the best available research on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units and officers (Schmalleger, 2011). In my understanding of evidence based policing I tend to feel that you can’t acquire or solve a case without sufficient and proper research such as gathering pure concrete evidence.
Technology and science has made major advances and improvements which can be a positive force in evidence based policing. The rule to evidence based policing is that it is based on facts and not stories. I think that with law enforcers or the enforcement of the law it needs structure and with evidence based policing the production of concrete evidence helps ensure that the law will be fair and consistent.
Some of the advantages and disadvantages of evidence based policing in my opinion would be sometimes a law or policy is not followed off of evidence based policing but off of an opinion, this would be a disadvantage. And according to Lawrence Sherman a police researcher he says “is that we are entitled to our own opinions but not to our own facts”. And I agree with this as well. One of the advantages of evidence based policing in my opinion would be that it is set up to help reduce crime and violence.
In my research I came across a case in which evidence based policing was thrown out over a polygraph test. In this case a Dallas judge ruled against the Dallas police department and took the testimony of the defendant who states the police searched her home without a warrant and found her boyfriends drugs and threatened to take her kids away unless she signed a document...