The Diffusion of Innovation among United States Policing Jurisdictions: A Cautionary Tale for Theorists and Researchers

Matthew J. DeGarmo

Washington State University, USA

Abstract:

This article is intended to stimulate discussion on how the policing community theoretically and empirically deal with the diffusion of innovation motifs. Through a rather argumentative prose, argued is the issue that the field of criminology may proffer from taking a theoretical and methodological step back, so to speak, in order to discover how we have arrived at our current understanding of diffusion of innovation concepts and how we should proceed given alternate frameworks of discovery. The framework championed here is that of "cultural transmissions theory" which describes the modes of connectivity between communicating entities [persons, groups, organizations, etc.]. This framework is thus applied to explain the processional paths with which innovation and succeeding information are spread throughout United States Policing agencies. Five propositions are preemptively discoursed in accordance with the theoretical underpinnings of the cultural transmission theory then retrospectively analyzed using Social Network Analysis techniques [used mainly for illustrative purposes]. Overall, it is argued that the field of criminology should consider these propositions prior to investigating how information disseminates among policing jurisdictions.

Keyword:

Policing, Social Network Analysis, Cultural Transmission Theory.