“Just Right” Policing: a Job for Science

Research Question Can police develop the concept of “signal failures” to build a science of “just right” policing, learning from the mistakes of both “under-policing” and “over-policing”? Data Qualitative documentation of “signal failure” events across the history of Anglo-American policing that have generated widespread public disapproval of police actions or inactions. Methods This communication analyzes and illustrates the potential value of applying scientific methods to signal failures, as a potential source of learning from past failures to prevent future disapproval. Findings There are at least four dimensions for pre-mortems against signal failures: quantity of officers present at an incident, quantity of force used by police, quality of choices police make in deciding what to do, and quality of how well police do what is decided to be done. Signal failures can be collected historically and contemporaneously in large police forces, or across multiple smaller forces at a state or provincial level. They can be compared to samples of similar events that did not become signal failures. Even a simple case-control comparison can be a method for predicting which dimension of an event might be most likely to cause a signal failure. Yet building such data bases requires that police records systems become easier to access, so that both internal and external research can be done to enhance “just right” policing. Conclusion Like many rare events, it is convenient to dismiss signal failures as “flukes” with little potential for prevention. But like airplane crashes and house fires, rare events can be made even rarer. The value of the scientific method cannot be dismissed without testing its application to these major threats to police legitimacy. “Just right” policing may depend on it.