Data is King...can data inform law enforcement training?
Jonathan McCombs, Ph.D.
Developing partnerships that solve challenging problems | Pushing the boundaries of traditional higher education | Passionate about student success!
Law enforcement training has been the key component highlighted for improving police-community relations and police interactions. Trainers have tried to accommodate this imperative through increasing mental health training, de-escalation training, and other aspects of police community relations. These types of training are important, but the perception of law enforcement by the public calls for a deeper analysis of the impact of training. Data is the key.
Data is king in the business world. Those that do not use data to inform decision-making are doomed to business failure. In the same way, law enforcement must learn to utilize data to inform decision-making and training. Law enforcement has already made great strides since 9/11/2001 in intelligence-led policing and COMPSTAT policing to inform strategic policing and to help with crime control. In the same way, data can help to inform the way in which training is developed and delivered.
For instance, law enforcement agencies can look at complaint data to inform what types of interactions officers are involved that create more complaints over time. In the past, training officers have looked at individual incidents as training tools, but the data may be more helpful. Other data points to consider include use of force data, incident report errors, criminal convictions, etc. All of these metrics can be monitored over time. With the proper training intervention, the data can be impacted to show leadership the type of change they want to see.
Data will continue to drive decision-making in most all sectors of society. The type of data and the methods for analysis are important to consider in a plan to improve morale, develop officers, and to improve police-citizen interactions and ultimately public perception of the police.
Once you have obtained enough data to inform you of what training topics to tackle, you can also utilize data to improve learning. Do you have pre- and post- testing to understand what officers have learned? Do you improve instructor performance through analyzing the feedback from the officers? Many of these types of data points will help to inform what you are doing well and what areas need improving or need more emphasis. You may learn something you never would have known before.
Learn more about how to track, analyze, and utilize data to inform your training needs.
-Dr. Jonathan McCombs
Developing partnerships that solve challenging problems | Pushing the boundaries of traditional higher education | Passionate about student success!
7 年Sounds interesting. I'm always looking for article ideas.
Director, Masters in Criminal Justice & Community Corrections Program, and Asst. Prof. of Practice, Criminal Justice, Law & Behavioral Science at Russell Sage College. Executive Director, DE-ESCALATE, LLC
7 年Excellent points Jonathan! Where data is analyzed and presented to leaders in LE who understand its value and utility it is highly useful. Larger agencies with skilled analysts are most likely to use data. Sadly, courses in data analysis are not mandatory in many CJ programs. I have grad students in LE who are both unaware of regularly generated DOJ data and do not know how to make use of it. Perhaps an article on how officers can access and make practical heads or tails of DOJ data is in order?