As we wrote yesterday, the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity is hosting a conference in Washington, D.C. this weekend on the future of research on gender and racial equity in policing. The meeting continues the CPLE's incredible track record of bringing together social scientists and police department heads, two groups that have generally avoided collaboration in the past. In fact, a number of researchers told me that today's scene—in which grizzled police veterans discussed new ways of reporting, sharing and analyzing data with college professors—would have been considered revolutionary 15 years ago.

There are a number of factors underlying this shift, but today's conference highlighted one: the growing realization that sharing data can work for both sides. By calling in researchers, the police can learn new insights on the effectiveness and legitimacy of their force, and academics are allowed access to data that previously remained locked away in precinct offices. It's a win-win relationship, and a potential solution to a major problem that has hampered research in this area. In a recent paper on policing equity research, Phillip A. Goff and Kimberly B. Kahn argued that there is a "shocking dearth of scientific certainty about how to assess racial bias in policing," which they ascribed to the limitations of research methods and insufficient access to data. Now, with 14 partner police departments listed with the CPLE, there are growing possibilities to test new hypotheses and experimental approaches.

In their paper, Goff and Kahn describe how the CPLE organizes its partnerships:

[Most] CPLE collaborations are structured by legal documents that protect the rights of police departments and researchers. Partner law enforcement departments are able to spell out concrete deliverables that they would appreciate receiving from the collaboration, and are protected from researchers speaking out about the process in the press without the consent of law enforcement. Similarly, researchers usually provide advanced notice to police departments (in advance of submitting research for publication), and departments are able to opt to have their names removed from the publication prior to anything being submitted. Researchers, on the other hand, are protected against law enforcement interests attempting to influence how data are described or what, when, or where the data are published. In an attempt to demonstrate objectivity to both the scientific and municipal communities, the CPLE also does not accept funding from municipal law enforcement partners.

You can read the CPLE's research agenda, The Contract for Policing Justice, for more information on the group's work. The Foundation has also funded a working group on racial bias in policing and publishes links to new studies on the subject.