New article provides orientation to using implementation science in policing
Evidence-based policing can help ensure practices are rooted in research
Crime and Justice Research Alliance
Since the 2020 murder by Minneapolis police of George Floyd brought nationwide calls for change amid concerns that prevailing practices were not grounded in evidence and created harm, policing has been in turmoil. Implementation science (IS) involves integrating effective and evidence-based innovations into routine practice in fields like health care. Yet despite its potential, IS—and specifically, evidence-based policing (EBP)—remain vastly understudied and unused in police settings. In a new article, researchers provide an orientation to these issues to help practitioners and researchers involved with policing integrate IS into EBP.
The article was written by researchers at Temple University, Brown University, the University of Massachusetts, RTI International, Rhode Island Hospital, and George Mason University. It is published in Police Quarterly.
“Policing is ripe for new methods to examine how to change organizations and how to assess the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of evidence-driven reforms in police settings,” says Brandon del Pozo, assistant professor of medicine and of health services, policy and practice at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, as well as a research scientist at Rhode Island Hospital, who led the study.
In this article, researchers offer agendas for integrating IS into EBP as police seek to adopt evidence-informed practices that deliver public safety, respect rights, and boost community satisfaction and trust. IS promotes the use of metrics to assess how different police practices influence various outcomes, which provides police leadership valuable data about their organization.
In the article, researchers describe the historical roots of EBP in an evidence-based approach to health care, demonstrate the commonalities that make IS as natural to policing as to medicine, and survey research on IS in policing. In addition, they adapt a conceptual model of IS to policing, present two IS frameworks available to researchers and practitioners of EBP, and introduce three types of hybrid implementation/effectiveness trials suitable for use in dynamic police settings, as well as case studies.
The article also highlights the importance of the effective de-implementation of substandard or problematic practices as a key aspect of IS and discusses how police practice that fully embraces evidence will be guided by contestable values and norms, with IS providing a way to reconcile this concern. The authors conclude with a research and practice agenda for integrating IS into EBP as police contend with calls to adopt evidence-informed practices, and they address counterinfluences in policing that hamper IS’s effectiveness.
“Evidence-based policing, which aims to identify and adopt police practices supported by scientific evidence, is frequently discussed in policing but has been slow to catch on in the United States,” explains Steven Belenko, professor of criminal justice at Temple University, who coauthored the study. Belenko is an expert whose work is promoted by the NCJA Crime and Justice Research Alliance, which is funded by the National Criminal Justice Association.
“De-escalation, procedural justice, hot spot policing, focused deterrence, and virtually any other body of evidence-based practices lend themselves to studying the constructs that ensure they can be implemented with enough fidelity to be effective and sustainable.”
The study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Journal
Police Quarterly
Article Title
Using Implementation Science to Improve Evidence-Based Policing: An Introduction for Researchers and Practitioners
Pre-arrest diversion-to-treatment programs may reduce crime, overdose deaths
Completing a six-month substance use disorder treatment in lieu of arrest and prosecution for minor crimes may reduce the risk of arrest, incarceration or fatal overdose, according to a new study
HERSHEY, Pa. — Pre-arrest diversion-to-treatment programs that focus on long-term treatment for substance use disorder may reduce crime recidivism, incarceration and overdose deaths, according to new study led by a research team from Penn State College of Medicine.
Diversion programs aim to connect individuals who have committed a crime to programs or services as an alternative to the criminal justice system, avoiding prosecution and arrest. The research team evaluated the Madison Area Recovery Initiative (MARI), a community-wide, law-enforcement-led program in Madison, Wisconsin. They found that people who committed non-violent, minor drug-use related crimes and who received a clinical assessment and six months of individualized treatment were less likely to be arrested, incarcerated or have a fatal overdose in the year following their initial arrest.
They published their findings in the Journal of Substance Use & Addiction Treatment.
“There are many sectors of our community, beyond clinical providers, patients and families, that are involved in or impacted by addiction and who are interested in innovative solutions,” said Aleksandra Zgierska, Jeanne L. and Thomas L. Leaman, MD, Endowed Professor at Penn State College of Medicine and lead researcher on the MARI project. “We thought that responding to drug use-related crime may serve as a point of intervention to facilitate addiction treatment, which we know is effective in improving health and lives and in reducing crime.”
The concept for MARI was born out of conversations dating back to 2015 between Zgierska and Captains Cory Nelson and Jason Freedman of the Madison Police Department (MPD) about how law enforcement can help address the opioid-related overdose epidemic and associated crime. They brought together partners, including the mayor’s office, the district and city attorneys’ offices and public health, treatment and community organizations, to design and implement the program.
“The key was to create evidence-based, community-focused practices in policing,” said Joseph Balles, retired MPD captain, who coordinated the MARI project and co-authored the paper. “We wanted to know if, instead of arresting someone, you connect them to treatment, can that have an impact?”
Unlike other diversion programs, MARI was designed to recognize that substance use disorder is a chronic disease and emphasize longer-term engagement, explained the research team. Adult residents of the local county who committed a minor, drug use-related crime were eligible to participate. In lieu of arrest and prosecution, they were referred for a clinical assessment for substance use disorder and connected to individually-tailored treatment, counseling, peer support and recovery services. The research team previously published several papers on the MARI project including the implementation of the program, also in the Journal of Substance Use & Addiction Treatment.
“This is an opportunity to get people who need it into long-term, evidence-based treatment, not just forcing them to quit ‘cold turkey,’” said Jennifer Nyland, assistant professor of neural and behavioral sciences at Penn State College of Medicine and first author on the paper. “Recovery is a long road riddled with setbacks. MARI was designed to support treatment as a pathway toward recovery rather than punishing individuals for their addiction-fueled mistakes and setbacks.”
Criminal charges were held in abeyance while participants engaged in MARI and then voided for those who completed the six-month program, keeping them off their permanent criminal record. If participants did not engage or did not complete the program, charges were filed with local prosecutors.
“Criminal charges that become part of one’s record and come up on background checks can adversely impact access to resources vital to recovery such as housing or employment,” Nyland said, explaining how MARI’s promotion of an “untarnished” criminal record could have a positive impact on long-term recovery.
The program enrolled 263 people between September 2017 and August 2020. Of these participants, 103 engaged in the program, 60 began the program but did not complete it and 100 successfully completed the six-month program.
Data on arrests, incarceration and fatal overdoses were collected for one year after initial program enrollment. During that period, those who completed MARI had a more favorable crime and overdose profile. Compared to participants who completed the program, those who did not engage or who did not complete the program were 3.9 and 3.6 times, respectively, more likely to be arrested and 10.3 and 21.0 times, respectively, to be incarcerated. Up to a year later, 5.8% of participants who did not engage and 3.3% of those who did not complete MARI had a fatal overdose compared to 2.0% of those who completed the program.
The research team also found that those participants who did not engage in MARI were more likely not to have permanent housing. While the number of women in the program was low overall, women were more likely than men not to engage in the program. Those who did not complete or engage in the program were also more likely to have a more extensive criminal record, such as a higher number of prior arrests and incarceration.
The MARI program has been a model for the U.S. Department of Justice and other cities and counties across the country. For example, in Pennsylvania, the Law Enforcement Treatment Initiative, a launched by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and law enforcement in 2018 currently operates in 30 counties and has implemented principles of diversion-to-treatment emphasized in MARI. MARI was recently awarded a grant from Target and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, recognizing its innovative practices.
“When you read the evaluations, people often expressed the sentiment that, ‘I can't believe it was law enforcement that introduced me to recovery.’ That's what I'm most proud of. We went out and connected people to treatment,” Balles said.
Alice Zhang, assistant professor of family and community medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, also contributed to the paper. Other authors include current or former University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty and students: Laura Albert, Mary Henningfield, Thao Nguyen and Veronica White.
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance funded this work.
Journal
Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Law enforcement-led, pre-arrest diversion-to-treatment may reduce crime recidivism, incarceration, and overdose deaths: Program evaluation outcomes
Article Publication Date
1-Oct-2024
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