The Pursuit of Knowledge: Translating knowledge-based models in police intelligence work
Talk by doctoral research fellow Camilla Løvschall Langeland, University of Oslo.
Contemporary police reforms aim to offer solutions grounded in data-driven decision-making and knowledge-based approaches. However, practitioners identify a different challenge. While data and information exist within and across police systems, access to them is limited and, in some cases, non-existent. Drawing on interviews with 35 intelligence analysts in Norway and Denmark, this article examines how knowledge-based policing is experienced in everyday intelligence practice. Analysts consistently identify the most valuable knowledge as already present in existing registers, yet challenging to access and integrate across systems, platforms and agencies. Rather than calling for more data, they point to organisational and technological constraints that prevent available information from becoming actionable intelligence.
Conceptualising this dynamic as a knowledge accessibility paradox, the article argues that the promise of knowledge-based policing is constrained less by data scarcity than by the conditions under which knowledge is accessed, assembled, and made usable. By foregrounding analysts’ perspectives, the study shifts attention from data accumulation to the practical and organisational factors that shape what can count as knowledge in police work.