With a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Institute for Community-Police Relations of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has collaborated with researchers from George Mason University’s (GMU) Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy to create an evidence-based Blueprint for 21st Century Policing. The research team was charged with reviewing existing research knowledge about those Task Force recommendations relevant to state and local law enforcement, highlighting promising efforts based on research knowledge, and identifying issues that need more research and testing.

Including research in the conversation about law enforcement policy and practice—an idea known as evidence-based policing—has become an important value of law enforcement. Evidence-based policing is based on the idea that research knowledge is an essential part of police decision-making and can provide expertise and an objective perspective for a complex profession.

Toward those ends, the goal of this assessment of the research knowledge behind the 21st Century Policing Task Force Report recommendations is to provide information about what we know from research about those recommendations and what more needs to be learned through police-research partnerships to advance them.