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The growth of randomized experiments in policing: the vital few and the salience of mentoring

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Abstract

Objectives

The population of randomized experiments in policing is used to examine co-author and mentoring relations in the professional network of scholars and assess if experimental criminology is on the path to creating the necessary social capital to promote the use of randomized controlled trials in criminology and criminal justice research.

Methods

We use systematic review methods to identify the population of policing experiments. Narrative review and descriptive statistics are used to examine the growth of policing experiments over time. Social network analysis techniques are used to analyze and describe the co-authoring and mentoring connections of the scholars responsible for completing policing experiments.

Results

We find that the number of policing experiments increased substantially between 1970 and 2011. The growth in policing randomized experiments has been largely generated by a very small number of scholars who account for the bulk of policing experiments and have been very active in mentoring the next generation of experimentalists. Another important factor associated with the rise in policing experiment is the availability of federal funding.

Conclusions

Our analysis of policing experiments suggests that the experimental criminology movement is developing the necessary human and social capital to advance the discipline of criminology. However, it is a very small network that could benefit from the addition of new members and increased training and mentoring of graduate students.

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Notes

  1. http://gemini.gmu.edu/cebcp/dec.html

  2. The following three search terms were used: randomized controlled trial AND police, randomized experiment AND police, and experiment AND police.

  3. The following 15 databases were searched: Criminal Justice Periodical Index, Sociological Abstracts, Social Science Abstracts (SocialSciAbs), Social Science Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Search (AHSearch), Criminal Justice Abstracts, National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Abstracts, Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse (ERIC), Legal Resource Index, Dissertation Abstracts, Government Publications Office, Monthly Catalog (GPO Monthly), Google Scholar, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) SearchFirst, CINCH data search, and C2 SPECTR (The Campbell Collaboration Social, Psychological, Educational and Criminological Trials Register).

  4. These journals were: Criminology, Criminology & Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Justice, Police Quarterly, Policing, Police Practice and Research, British Journal of Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and Policing and Society. Hand searches covered 1970–2011.

  5. Ms. Phyllis Schultze of the Gottfredson Library at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice executed the initial abstract search and was consulted throughout on our search strategies.

  6. The replications of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment in five other cities did not produce the same findings. In his review of those differing findings, Sherman (1992, p.19) identified four policy dilemmas for policing domestic violence: (1) arrest reduces domestic violence in some cities but increases it in others, (2) arrest reduces domestic violence among employed people but increases it among unemployed people, (3) arrest reduces domestic violence in the short run but can increase it in the long run, and (4) police can predict which couples are most likely to suffer future violence, but our society values privacy too highly to encourage preventive action.

  7. The UK restorative justice randomized controlled trials were designed and implemented by Lawrence Sherman and Heather Strang. However, it is important to note here that Shapland et al. (2008) were assigned by the UK Home Office as independent evaluators to measure the results of the experiments. Given their seminal role in the development and execution of these studies, we credited Sherman and Strang reports and publications as the primary references for these randomized experiments.

  8. This supplemental search was completed by taking each mentored scholar’s name and replicating the abstract search procedures described earlier in the systematic review methods section. For example, we combined “Justin Ready” with “randomized controlled trial”, “randomized experiment”, and “experiment” and searched for these keyword terms in the 15 online abstract databases. Abstracts were screened and potentially eligible studies were obtained and reviewed.

  9. In fact, the observed degree distribution in Figure 5 is one of the key properties of formal small-world graphs; the other two properties being a graph’s clustering coefficient (C) and average path length (L). Also, consistent with the properties of small-world graphs, initial tests suggest that the total network in Fig. 4 has a high clustering coefficient (C = 0.606) and a short average path length (L = 2.91).

Further Reading

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

    Anthony A. Braga, Cory Schnell & Leigh Grossman

  2. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Anthony A. Braga

  3. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Brandon C. Welsh

  4. Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Brandon C. Welsh

  5. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Andrew V. Papachristos

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  2. Brandon C. Welsh
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  3. Andrew V. Papachristos
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  4. Cory Schnell
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  5. Leigh Grossman
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Correspondence to Anthony A. Braga.

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Braga, A.A., Welsh, B.C., Papachristos, A.V. et al. The growth of randomized experiments in policing: the vital few and the salience of mentoring. J Exp Criminol 10, 1–28 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-013-9183-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-013-9183-2

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