Policing futures: transforming the evidence-based policing paradigm through interdisciplinarity and epistemological anarchism

Evidence-based policing (EBP) has gained prominence in jurisdictions across the core anglosphere. Its paradigmatic approach to knowledge production, and the assessment and validation criteria for research designs and their outputs remains in contention. Concurrently, interdisciplinarity (ID) has proliferated in other areas of research and practice, yet EBP remains untouched by these global developments and it appears a neglected area of academic debate. In combination with limited uptake at institutional and practice levels, a troubled landscape, and predictions of an uncertain and extraordinarily complex future operating environment (FOE): the question arises whether the present EBP paradigm is sufficient to meet the challenges and implications for policing and police research. This conceptual paper makes an epistemic assessment of the paradigm and drawing on ID and epistemological anarchism (EA) it contributes a perspective on its theoretical and methodological innovation as a futures-focused endeavour. It concludes that if EBP is to be maximised as a knowledge enterprise in support of policing in the FOE, a broader epistemology is necessary, that embraces methodological pluralism, eschews epistemic monolithism and proactively applies ID and EA to research, policy and practice.

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