The model of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) inspired other What Works Centres in domains outside of health – including policing and crime reduction. But how was this model adapted and adopted in policing? The College of Policing, which was created as the Professional Body for Policing, and a precursor body, the National Policing Improvement Agency, have for many years promoted a ‘professionalisation agenda’ in policing through various methods, including embedding evidence-based practice into police standards and policies (Hunter et al, 2017). As part of this evidence agenda, the College established a What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (WWCCR) in 2013 and created a standard system to rate and rank interventions in terms of their effectiveness and cost-savings (Effect, Mechanism, Moderators, Implementation and Economic Cost [EMMIE]) and an online Crime Reduction Toolkit. The centre has worked closely with the police on evidence-based standards, national policies and learning.

How successful has this close engagement with the police and stakeholders been? Other What Works Centres have been set up with greater independence – as stand-alone charities, or within universities. But the WWCCR is part of the College of Policing, which is an operationally independent arm’s-length body of government. I led on setting up the WWCCR and will discuss how the close relationship with the police has evolved and its practical lessons for other areas of policy and practice.

Why What Works in a crime and policing context

There were two obvious and long-standing evidence challenges in the crime and policing context in the 2010s. The first is fairly standard in government: with limited resources, where should investment be targeted? Or, to put it another way – which activities would impact most on crime? The second was a related practice problem: a significant amount of crime prevention and policing practice lacked a clear evidence base. Even where we had the evidence, decisions were sometimes taken with potential or known harmful effects for the public – such as introducing initiatives taking young people to visit prisons, in line with the well-known Scared Straight example, found to increase offending (Petrosino et al, 2013).