This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of EBP, and the ways in which EBP’s seductive catchphrase ‘what works’ is being understood and applied. Through the lens of care ethics, we integrate ‘what matters’ with ‘what works’, and ‘what matters/works here’ with ‘what matters/works everywhere’. This approach recognises relational expertise, practical reasoning and critical inquiry as vital for EBP in practices of social intervention. Drawing on key care ethics motifs, we suggest that care is the ethical scaffolding upon which social justice relies, and hence crucial to organs of security, peacekeeping and law enforcement. From this position, we argue that policing might renegotiate its difficult relationship with the particular, recasting it from something uncomfortably discretionary (the maverick cop) and shameful (an individualised blame culture) into something which underpins and enhances police professionalism. Whilst developed in a policing context, these reflections have a broader relevance for questions of professional legitimacy and credibility, especially within the ‘new professions’, and the costs of privileging any one type of understanding over others.

本文考虑了循证实践 (EBP) 为何以及如何在实践中被扭曲，以及如何应对。我们提供了来自警务行动研究项目的定性数据，以突出 EBP 的言辞和现实之间的紧张关系，以及 EBP 诱人的标语“什么有效”被理解和应用的方式。通过护理伦理的视角，我们将“重要的”与“有效的”、“重要的/在这里有效的”与“重要的/无处不在的”相结合。这种方法承认关系专业知识、实践推理和批判性探究对于 EBP 在社会干预实践中至关重要。借鉴关键的护理伦理主题，我们认为护理是社会正义所依赖的道德脚手架，因此对安全、维和和执法机构至关重要。从这个位置，我们认为，警务可能会重新协商其与特定对象之间的困难关系，将其从令人不快的自由裁量权（特立独行的警察）和可耻的（个性化的责备文化）重新塑造成支持和增强警察专业精神的东西。虽然在警务背景下发展，但这些反思与职业合法性和可信度问题具有更广泛的相关性，尤其是在“新职业”中，以及将任何一种理解置于其他理解之上的成本。