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Experimentation, innovation, and evaluation are key elements of Evidence Based Policing (EBP), itself often aligned to wider efforts to improve police professionalism. Producing new evidence of ‘what works’ is an important part of the challenge of developing more effective policing responses to complex demands in a period of limited resources. Drawing on our experience of understanding successful innovations in policing domestic abuse, we reflect on the quality and status of research evidence in policing and the implications that these might have in terms of informing good practice. We worked in collaboration with police staff to identify areas in which innovation in policing domestic abuse has been successful. Selected projects were required to meet the criteria of having been developed from an evidence base (broadly defined to include professional expertise, scientific research and guidance from authoritative bodies), subject to evaluation and as having had a demonstrable positive impact. Our collaborative work identified some interesting variations in terms of understandings of these three criteria in the context of innovations in policing domestic abuse. Here we reflect on what passes as evidence and evaluation and more broadly what counts as research which helps determine what works, all as part of our project to build capacity through collaborative partnership policing.

Over the past decade the national governments of the UK have repositioned ‘community safety’ as a priority area. The complexity of reducing real and perceived crime rates and levels of antisocial behaviour is widely accepted. This has inspired the development of numerous programmes aimed at delivering safer and stronger communities in specific contexts. One of the strategies promoted in Scotland is the Community Warden Scheme, which aims to provide a ‘uniformed, semi-official police presence’ at a community level. Scotland's Community Wardens characterise the growing trend towards the pluralisation of police service providers, as a myriad of actors constitute the ‘extended policing family’. Amidst the diversification and expansion of policing actors, issues surrounding public accountability and policing authority loom large. This paper aims to critically examine the role of Scotland's Community Wardens in relation to the broader policing landscape, drawing on empirical data generated in one city (...

In recent years ‘community safety’ has received renewed levels of interest and investment from national governments and local authorities. This has culminated in the proliferation of a diverse range of in/formal policing strategies incorporating crime reduction and/or crime prevention. The policies and programmes developed to deliver ‘community safety’ reflect local concerns as much as national commitment. One such programme is Scotland's Community Warden Scheme, which provides the focus of this article. Community Wardens are characterised as a ‘uniformed, semi-official presence’ within an extended policing team, focusing on the improvement of community safety measures. Drawing on innovative empirical data generated in Dundee, this article critically evaluates the positive and negative attributes of the Community Warden Scheme from the perspective of the Wardens. It highlights the key themes of developing relationships with the local community; establishing and addressing local policing priorities; multi-stakeholder working; and, the tensions between Community Warden management and practice, to make suggestions about how the strengths of the programme can be maintained and the weaknesses addressed. The article aims to make an important contribution to debates about current approaches to ‘community safety’ while engaging with the policy and practitioner aspects of its delivery.