| Summary: | To what extent can we trust police research? In this paper, I use Brown’s (1996) typology of police ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ to delineate some of the methodological challenges to conducting research on the police. I argue that there has been a convergence between insider and outsider research in the context of key developments to police research and policing more generally. On the one hand, ‘outside’ police scholars are being incentivised to work more collaboratively with police organisations as part of knowledge-exchange funding schemes. On the other, the police have become increasingly driven by an evidence-based approach that encourages greater analytical capabilities of those on the ‘inside’. This blurring of outsiders and insiders brings a series of advantages to police research, including better access to the field, opportunities for knowledge exchange, wider dissemination of results and greater policy impact. But simultaneously, researchers now face a number of challenges, including a narrowing focus on policy-oriented research questions, as well as a possible erosion of research independence. I argue that in order to trust police research in this collaborative phase, researchers must be able to adopt a reflexive approach and ask wider questions than ‘what works’. The discussion is not limited to Nordic countries; nor is it specific to police research. However, the themes presented here are of critical importance in establishing trust in Nordic police research.
|
|---|