PREVIEW FEATURES Suppose We Were Really Serious About Police Departments Becoming “ Learning Organizations ” ?

policy-relevant research results and initiatives. The Attorney General has determined that publication of this periodical is necessary in the transaction of the public business required by law of the Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice. The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), a centralized national clearinghouse of criminal justice information , is sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs agencies and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Registered users of NCJRS receive the National Institute of Justice Journal and NCJRS Catalog free. Reviewing the feature articles in this issue of the National Institute of Justice Journal, I was reminded of how numerous and wide-ranging are the concerns of criminal justice professionals. So are the levels at which these concerns are tackled: strategic planning, resource allocation, measuring progress against goals—to name only a few. At one and the same time, day-today practices are carried out, agency procedures are followed. On the margin of the day a moment may be carved out for reflection, for gaining perspective by pondering past actions as a prelude to defining future courses. The articles on DNA evidence by Victor Weedn and John Hicks and on drug testing by Tom Mieczkowski and Kim Lersch are rooted in the everyday practicalities dealt with by police, prosecutors, and the judiciary. They illustrate as well the dependence of criminal justice practitioners on the " hard sciences, " and our rationale in selecting them for the Journal was to help keep criminal justice professionals in these fields abreast of some of the most advanced technologies and practices in use now and on the horizon. On the continuum of criminal justice concerns, the issues William Geller raises in his article on police departments as " learning organizations " seem to lie far from DNA and drug testing. To be sure, police management is no less of a day-today proposition, but this article suggests mentally and momentarily suspending workaday realities in order to consider broad new management concepts in which research has a key role. The author proposes that police organizations can institutionalize the learning process in the same way as the country's best run businesses. Professor Mark Moore's article on the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the President's Crime Commission is more contemplative still. He …