Current police practices, such as criminal investigations, generate a variety of data that are potentially
available to social science researchers. Despite the vital importance of criminal investigations in
police operations, there has been limited research on criminal investigation practices. Here, we
explore how research analysing police-generated investigation data would contribute to criminal
justice and police research, and police organizations. We provide examples from Norwegian police
registry data such as national criminal registers, police case files and data from forensic DNA
databases. Police registry data may contribute to opening the ‘black box’ surrounding criminal
investigation practices, thereby providing important insights into practices that are crucial for the
development of organizational learning and knowledge creation. The original contribution of this
paper is that it explores the untapped potential of analysing police-generated investigation data
for research purposes, an issue that has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature on police
performance and organizations.