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The Uses of Research: Politics, Academics, and the Police in the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany

This paper compares research that has been published within the past 20 years on police organization and operations in two countries, the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany. The research in the two countries is compared in terms of the influence of political and organizational forces on its quality and nature. After a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when academics in both countries, responding to the dramatic events of the 1960s, were engaging in similar kinds of research, the paths diverged because of the organizational forces that were at work on them. In Germany, disillusionment with the results of research, as well as other forces that existed in the German police organization, helped to bring about the end of field studies of police. Increasingly, research on policing has become informed by an abstract critical legal studies perspective. In the United States, under the influence of various forces including availability of federal government funds, research on policing has become pragmatic, geared toward better methods of crime control and fear reduction, and, compared to the earlier period, neglectful of basic questions about the police role and performance in American society.