Underwriting the Risky Investment in Community Policing: What Social Science Should Be Doing to Evaluate Community Policing

America appears to have committed itself to a profound shift in its core policing strategy, from “reform policing” to “community policing.” This shift has been propelled by a powerful historical critique of the reform strategy; by an operational movement in police departments; and by political forces. Still unanswered is the question of whether community policing “works”; that is, is a more valuable organizational strategy than the reform strategy. Social science and evaluation research are turning to this question. Implicit in the approach of community policing is a belief that the values of social science should guide social decision making; that this is a specialized task for trained outside evaluators; that “crime” is the most critical performance dimension; and that programs rather than organizations are the proper units of analysis. The authors argue that this framework may hinder the full development of community-policing departments as “learning organizations”; that dimensions other than crime are also important in recognizing the value that police departments contribute to cities; and that the successful evaluation of the community-policing movement requires attention to organizations as well as programs. They suggest a modified social science research agenda.