Michael S. Scott is a clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, specializing in research and teaching in policing, and the director of the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. Scott was formerly chief of police in Lauderhill, Florida, served in various civilian administrative positions in the St. Louis Metropolitan, Ft. Pierce, Florida, and New York City police departments, and was a police officer in the Madison, Wisconsin Police Department. He was a Senior Researcher at the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) in Washington, D.C.
How common is failure in policing?
Failure is built into policing because typically, formal policing is only needed when other forms of social control have failed. But even when policing is done well, it doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is solved for all time. The problem could return at some future time or in some other form, and new problems arise all the time.
Can you give me an example?
A prime example is the Boston youth gun violence project, which at the time it was conducted was widely deemed an unqualified success. Several years later, homicide rates among young people in Boston went back up and there were grumblings around the country that the Boston project was a failure. Part of the reason that success in that initiative wasn’t sustained over the long term is that many people didn't fully understand why it worked in the first place. It's a little like the old Hindu fable of 7 blind men and the elephant – each person comes away with a different version of reality. Some people give credit to the prosecutors, others give it to police working hand in hand with probation officials, and yet others say it was the black clergy and gang outreach workers who made it work. It undoubtedly was all these things and more working in combination, but that's a complex story to tell.
Why is that important?
In police agencies, we have not developed rigorous standards for defining and measuring success or failure. In their absence, we resort to very personalized and ad hoc measures. We decree all sorts of initiatives successes or failures without benefit of rigorous evaluation. Unfortunately, it's fairly easy to abandon a good idea or start a bad idea in policing. Policing is done in a very public way, and the public doesn't typically reward failure. Commonly, police officials define success on their own terms, which often means that if an initiative sounds innovative and it was implemented as planned, it is deemed a success even in the absence of careful assessment of the impact the initiative had on the problem it was intended to address. Very seldom do police chiefs say, "We had a great idea that just didn't work. We're going back to the drawing board to do it differently." That's what a scientist would say without batting an eye, but a police chief often doesn't feel that he or she has that kind of latitude. It feels like a very career-threatening thing to say. Ironically, in other contexts, police are very accustomed to being held to their proof. They must demonstrate probable cause to justify arrests and prosecution is based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But somehow those rather rigorous standards of proof don't seem to get applied to broader questions of the effectiveness, efficiency, or fairness of police strategies and tactics.
What role does leadership play in encouraging people to be more open about failure?
I wish police chiefs would come to trust their own professional instincts about management instead of just trying to emulate the corporate world or the military. This isn’t to say that police can’t learn from other fields, but policing is sufficiently unique that it demands its own management principles and leadership styles. Police leaders don't have the same kind of confidence in their own leadership style, so they are very sensitive to the latest faddish management style. What happens is that some people in policing become iconic leaders, and elected officials when hiring police chiefs say, "We want a chief like that." When I think of various leaders I've known in policing across the country who have been successful, they tend to be rational, reasonable and calm leaders, rather than head knockers or explosive personalities. They believe the path to their own and to their organizations’ success is in encouraging their subordinates to become competent leaders themselves. What you see all too often are bombastic leaders who suck up all the credit for themselves, who try to lead through criticism rather than encouragement and are threatened by competent subordinates.
Could the calm rational leader become an iconic style?
It's harder to make an icon out of these people, precisely because they don't attract a lot of attention. They don't seek out publicity about themselves and people don't instantly recognize what they do as leadership. But I hope the police field gets smarter about the leadership styles it celebrates. In general, there's too much attention being paid to what type of personality a person has, as opposed to what approach they will take to addressing particular problems.