Welcome to the RAND Center for Quality Policing

The RAND Center for Quality Policing (CQP) provides research and analysis to improve the practices, policies, and technologies used in policing. Our findings are of interest to police at all levels, law enforcement technology developers, law enforcement policymakers and funders, and the general public. CQP is part of the Justice Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being.

Better Policing Toolkit

Much of the discussion following George Floyd’s death has focused on ways to improve public safety. RAND’s Better Policing Toolkit analyzed evidence on policing strategies, based on strategy experiments in past meta-analyses of policing. The toolkit includes guides to implementing the most promising strategies for reducing crime, holding offenders accountable, and improving community trust and legitimacy. (It also describes why not to perform one strategy: zero tolerance or aggressive policing). The top-performing strategy experiments in all these studies typically saw improvements of 30% or more (mostly commonly in major crime reductions). These experiments provide evidence that a nationwide transformation could indeed result in major improvements in public safety outcomes.

COVID-19 and Policing

• An increasing number of police officers and deputies have been exposed or tested positive for the coronavirus. Instead of relying on existing resources, gaps in personnel coverage could be filled by easing restrictions on the hiring of retired police officers.
• From closed courts to increased risk for first responders, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new challenges for the justice system. RAND research provides insights that may be helpful as decisionmakers try and address some of these issues.
• The latest Center for Quality Policing newsletter summarizes RAND research of interest to police agencies during COVID-19, including information on protecting first responders during major incident response, combating misinformation, and detecting attack plots by those planning to use the outbreak to further acts of violence.

Bulletins For Practitioners

• To reduce assaults on police officers and other violent escalations, officers with body-worn cameras need to notify persons they are being recorded as soon as contacts begin. Otherwise, notifications may escalate rather than de-escalate situations.
• We found promising practices to reduce violence in sporting and other major events.
• Using ambulance and other medical emergency data can substantially improve awareness of where violence is occurring, improving how anti-violence resources are assigned. We have published a guide to getting and using this data.
• We analyzed evidence on policing strategies and created guides to implementing the most promising strategies for reducing crime, holding offenders accountable, and improving community trust and legitimacy. We have also identified what not to do.

Bulletins For Technology Developers and Acquisition Personnel

• In support of the US National Institute of Justice, we have top needs for innovation for the law enforcement field.
• We have detailed concepts of operations, specifications, protections, and contracting items needed for police agencies to use the following technologies efficiently and effectively: video analytics and sensor fusion, social media and social networking analysis, information sharing, next-generation broadband networks, and Internet of Things devices.
• We have a searchable database of over 1,000 needs for innovation from over two dozen studies.

Bulletins For Budgeters and Planners

• We created a calculator that predicts changes in crime levels based on changes in department size, using a finding that increasing police by 1% marginally reduces crime (on average, with much variation), by about 0.5%. The calculator also estimates changes in the economic costs of these crimes to society.
• We estimated how much responding to crimes costs police. We found that responding to a Part I violent crime costs, on average, about $11,000, and responding to a Part I property crime costs, on average, about $1,300.