Twenty-one Mental Models That Can Change Policing

Renée J. Mitchell served in the Sacramento Police Department for twenty-two years and is currently a Senior Police Researcher with RTI International. She holds a B.S. in Psychology, a M.A. in Counseling Psychology, a M.B.A., a J.D., and a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Cambridge. She has taught and lectured internationally on evidence-based policing and is best known for being the first policing pracademic to run a randomized controlled trial. She was a Fulbright Police Research Fellow and is the co-founder and executive committee member of the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing. She has two TEDx talks, "Research Not Protests" and "Policing Needs to Change: Trust me I’m a Cop," where she advocates for evidence-based policing. She has published her research in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing. Her books include Evidence Based Policing: An introduction and Implementing Evidence-Based Research: A How-to Guide for Police Organizations.

Introduction: What is a Mental Model and How Does It Help Policing; PART I: How We Think; Mental Model #1: System 1 and 2; Mental Model #2: Cognitive Bias; Mental Model #3: First Principles Thinking; The Mental Models in Practice I: Mental Models 1-3; Part II: How We Think About Math; Mental Model #4: False Linear Thinking; Mental Model #5: Binary Percent Changes; Mental Model #6: Second Order Thinking; The Mental Models in Practice II: Mental Models 4-6; PART III: How Things Concentrate; Mental Model #7: Pareto Principle; Mental Model #8: The Law of Crime concentration; Mental Model #9: Felonious Few; The Mental Models in Practice III: Mental Models 7-9; PART IV: How Things Vary; Mental Model #10: Distributions; Mental Model #11: Law of Large numbers; Mental Model #12: Regression to the Mean; The Mental Models in Practice IV: Mental Models 10-12; PART V: How to Determine Causality; Mental Model #13: Correlation is not Causation; Mental Model #14: Causal Inference; Mental Model #15: Bayesian (Probabilistic) Reasoning; The Mental Models in Practice V: Mental Models 13-15; Part VI: How to Think Scientifically; Mental Model #16: Peer Review Your Perspectives; Mental Model #17: The Scientific Method; Mental Model #18: Evidence-based Practices; The Mental Models in Practice VI: Mental Models 16-18; PART VII: How to Make Decisions; Mental Model #19: Targeting, Testing, and Tracking; Mental Model #20: Harm Indexes; Mental Model #21: Decision-making Models; The Mental Models in Practice VII: Mental Models 19-21; PART VIII: How to Apply it All; Conclusion: How the Twenty-one Mental Models Can Improve Policing and Reduce Cognitive Bias; Mental Model Method: How it all Fits Together Mental Models 1-21; Notes