Case Study: A Northeastern Police Department in the United States

This chapter reviews an evaluation of an EI system by Worden et al. (2013). The evaluation is the only available one that used a matched control group to assess the impact of an EI system. In terms of the theory of early intervention, the results were extremely disappointing. No significant differences were apparent on a range of indicators post-intervention for the EI group and the control. At the same time, the system departed from best practice principles in several important ways. Participation was confined to a training program that grouped profiled officers together, officers’ supervisors were not involved, and there was no monitoring program. In addition, the indicators used in the evaluation did not match the types of allegations used to profile and retrain officers. Despite the lack of positive impact data, the study nonetheless has valuable lessons for consideration in other settings.