In evidence-based policy there are no more important organizations than the Campbell Collaboration and the National Academies of Sciences. Campbell emphasizes systematic review and meta-analyses, taking a rigorous approach to identifying, coding, and analyzing prior studies. The National Academies takes a narrative approach to review, relying on experts to assess existing evidence, and providing a consensus set of conclusions.
Both of these organizations have reviewed the evidence on the crime control effectiveness of community policing, and both have concluded that it is not an evidence-based strategy to reduce crime. Gill, Weisburd, Telep, Vitter, and Bennett (2014), in a Campbell systematic review that covered studies until 2012 and included 37 studies in a meta-analysis, noted that “We do not find evidence that COP reduces…officially recorded crime” (p. 423). In a more recent review, the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Proactive Policing (Weisburd and Majmundar, 2018), concluded that “existing studies do not identify a consistent crime prevention benefit for community-oriented policing programs”.
