The research areas examined pertain to operations that involved more and better locks to prevent residential burglary, informal reparation in an effort to reduce vandalism, the use of a crime prevention support unit, situational crime prevention, and policing by objectives. The analysis of each of these research projects focused on how the initial policing problem was defined using what sort of information; how solutions were determined; how the solutions were implemented and the difficulties encountered; and how the effects of the solutions were assessed based on what kinds of information. The analysis found that virtually all the research was used to legitimate the activity to which it was addressed rather than to evaluate it critically. The evaluations lacked critical distance from what they studied and often presented police activity from the best possible perspective. 5 notes, 16 references.