Abstract

Current police practices, such as criminal investigations, generate a variety of data that are potentially available to social science researchers. Despite the vital importance of criminal investigations in police operations, there has been limited research on criminal investigation practices. Here, we explore how research analysing police-generated investigation data would contribute to criminal justice and police research, and police organizations. We provide examples from Norwegian police registry data such as national criminal registers, police case files and data from forensic DNA databases. Police registry data may contribute to opening the ‘black box’ surrounding criminal investigation practices, thereby providing important insights into practices that are crucial for the development of organizational learning and knowledge creation. The original contribution of this paper is that it explores the untapped potential of analysing police-generated investigation data for research purposes, an issue that has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature on police performance and organizations.