Story-Lines of Evidence-Based Policing

Research findings are presented from detailed study of the texts produced through the development of evidence-based policing (‘EBP’) discourse. The chapter focusses on what Hajer (The Politics of Environmental Discourse, Oxford University Press, 1995) has described as ‘story-lines’, which perform two important functions in discourse. First, story-lines facilitate discoursing actors to communicate about particular policy issues. Second, story-lines provide structure and discipline to actors entering the discursive argument. Story-lines develop through discourse to create emblematic issues that draw actors together—often from different perspectives—around a political issue. Study of EBP texts reveals EBPs key story-lines to be: policing improvement; real science; and the development of EBP. A number of sub-story-lines are identified within these three key story-lines, for example on medicalisation, randomised control trials and experimentation, positioned within the ‘real science’ story-line. Examples of how actors use and develop these story-lines within EBPs key texts are provided as story-lines intersect with subject positionality and institutional change through discourse. Together, this analysis illustrates how these elements contribute to the overall genealogy of EBP in Britain.