Squaring the circles: research, evidence, policy‐making, and police improvement in England and Wales

The paper will explore both evidence‐based policing and the policy process around policing in England and Wales, using the case studies of an attempted restructuring of forces, the introduction of neighborhood policing, and the creation of a national improvement strategy. It will examine the issues through the lens of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which is responsible for the development of the national strategy for improvement. The approach taken will be to seek to locate the NPIA’s strategy development within a discussion of evidence‐based policing and policy‐making in policing.