Innovative Possibilities: Global Policing Research and Practice builds on partnerships between police and academics. It engages researchers and police practitioners to build a bridge between policing research and practice. This book was published as a special issue of Police Practice and Research.

Les Johnston was formerly a Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. He has research interests in governance; security; and the relationship between state and non-state forms of policing. He has published articles in a wide variety of journals and his books include The Rebirth of Private Policing (London: Routledge, 1992) and (with Clifford Shearing) Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice (London: Routledge, 2003).

Clifford Shearing is the Chair of Criminology and Director of the Centre of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town. His most recent books are Ayling, J., Grabosky, P. & Shearing, C. 2009, Lengthening the Arm of the Law: Enhancing Police Resources in the 21st Century (Cambridge) and Wood, J and Shearing, C. 2007. Imagining Security (Willan).

Dilip K. Das is the President of the International Police Executive Symposium (www.ipes.info), Editor-in-Chief of Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, Human Rights Consultant to the United Nations and Professor of Criminal Justice.

1. From the Editor-in-Chief Dilip K Das

2. From a 'dialogue of the deaf' to a 'dialogue of listening': towards a new methodology of policing research and practice Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing

3. Ending the 'dialogue of the deaf': evidence and policing policies and practices. An Australian case study David Bradley and Christine Nixon

4. Squaring the circles: research, evidence, policy-making, and police improvement in England and Wales Peter Neyroud

5. Policing as self-audited practice Peter K. Manning

6. Research on Latin American police: where do we go from here? Hugo Frühling

7. Police practice and police research in Africa Etannibi E.O. Alemika

8. Police scholarship in China Kam C. Wong

9. Taming the 'Leviathan' in Johannesburg's townships: does a Hobbesian moral compass apply to policing in the twenty-first century? Andrew May