The Committee to Review Research on Police Policyand Practices’ Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing:The Evidenceprovides a review of research on thecauses of street-level police behavior, but the reportoffers little insight into how to control that discretioneffectively. This is not due to deficiencies in the reportbut rather to limitations of the available research. Thisarticle discusses four problems with that research:underdeveloped theory, weak research designs,insufficient generalizability of findings, and inattention to thekinds of police discretion that really matter to policymakers, practitioners, and the public. The article givesspecial attention to the last problem and makesrecommendations for improving the quality of research tobetter inform choices about how to control policestreetlevel discretion.
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