An analysis of the use of narrative forms in police work encountered a wide range of textual-distinctive (and non-discursive) technologies and formats which prevail within policing organizations, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance, computer-assisted dispatch system, data-processing and information-retrieval systems, and voice-entry occurrence report systems. Divided into five sections, this analysis begins by describing the background and context of research into police decisionmaking. It outlines an approach to an evaluation of an influential policy initiative aimed to standardize and rationalize the police decisionmaking process rendering it more efficient, fairer, and accountable. Critical questions were raised about the discursive relations of the decisionmaking process with one aspect of police work identified: the over-production and non-essential use of narrative formats. In preparing cases for disposal, arresting officers typically ignore the move to minimum file content, thereby compromising the efficiency-value of reduced paperwork premised on non-narrative formats. In 1997, Ericson and Haggerty’s thesis proposed the end-of-narrative. A methodology is developed for reading the police narratives collected in this study in a way that renders strategic policing value explicit. The narrative analysis was inherently problematic at the levels of both reading and effect. However, it provided an empirical counter-argument to Ericson’s and Haggerty’s end-of-narrative perspective. It suggested the need to be cautious of the claim that open-ended textual-discursive forms of organizational practice have no place or value in the risk society. References