By Gregory Cote

It is widely accepted that modern policing first came into existence with a bill passed in 1829, establishing the Metropolitan London Police under British Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel. It is Peel after all, who has been labeled the founder of modern policing, an English institution that inspired North American police. I argue that it was Jeremy Bentham who developed an early model of modern policing and whose work on applying his utilitarian philosophy to institutional reform directly influenced Peel’s innovation. I intend to show how Bentham and reformer Patrick Colquhoun established the first modern police department when they
collaborated in drafting the Thames River Police Bill adopted by Parliament in 1800, almost thirty years before Peel’s legislation. It is the Thames River Police created by Bentham and Colquhoun that is the world’s oldest, not the Metropolitan London Police introduced by Peel. John Stuart Mill once wrote that Bentham was a great subversive. And as the great subversive whose years of work on improving police was often done in secret and whose efforts were largely ignored, it is Bentham not Peel, who should be considered the single most important figure in the development of modern policing.

By Michael Sanders, Kate Bancroftb, Susannah Humea, Oliver Chetwyndc and Paul Quintonca

We aim to test the impact of a new national curriculum for public and personal safety training (PPST) developed by the College ofPolicing, which aims to reduce the use of force by police. We con-duct a large-scale Stepped Wedge Pragmatic Controlled Trial with a single police force and 1843 participating police officers.Officers were assigned to be trained during a particular week of the year. We find statistically significant reductions in the use of force by police officers as a result of the training. These effects are a reduction of between 8.0% and 10.9% in the propensity to use force in a given week compared to the counterfactual. The Effect is accompanied by a significant reduction in the likelihood of injury to civilians, and no rise in the risk of harm to officers.We conclude that the PPST curriculum appears effective at reduc-ing use of force by police in a large scale, robust trial

By Robert O. Motley Jr , Eric Williamson , Melissa McTernan , Sara Beeler c, Christopher P. Salas-Wright 

Purpose

Racism-based police violence (RPV) is an emerging public health concern. However, limited research has examined the relationship between RPV exposure and substance use, particularly among Black or African American and Hispanic emerging adults aged 18–29 years. This study assessed associations between lifetime RPV exposure across three domains (direct victimization, witnessing in person, and media-based exposure) and past 30-day and 12-month alcohol and cannabis use in this population.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted from August to October 2023 using a national nonprobability internet sample recruited via Qualtrics. The analytic sample included 936 Black or African American (48 %) and Hispanic (52 %) emerging adults. Negative binomial and logistic regression models were used to examine associations.

Results

Higher levels of RPV exposure were significantly associated with increased alcohol and cannabis use. RPV–Victim exposure was the strongest predictor of alcohol use, including past 30-day (IRR = 1.02, 95 % CI: 1.00–1.05) and 12-month (OR = 1.04, 95 % CI: 1.01–1.07) use. RPV–Witness exposure was most strongly associated with cannabis use, including past 30-day (IRR = 1.02, 95 % CI: 1.00–1.03) and 12-month (OR = 1.03, 95 % CI: 1.01–1.06) use. A dose-response pattern was observed across increasing levels of RPV exposure.

Conclusions

RPV exposure is a significant correlate of alcohol and cannabis use among Black or African American and Hispanic emerging adults. Findings suggest that perceived racialized policing is a significant risk factor for substance use and warrants further investigation as a potential structural determinant, highlighting it as an important target for public health interventions.

By The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre)

This resource introduces some of the key research and statistics on what is known about child sexual abuse: what it is, who harms children, where it takes place, the impact on children and, crucially, what you as a police professional can do in response. It is designed for all police professionals, whether you're the attending officer responding to a call or the officer assigned to a case. Throughout the 10 sections, you’ll find blue boxes containing key takeaways, prompts and signposts for you to consider when faced with concerns of child sexual abuse. At the end, there are links to other publications from the CSA Centre, which provide practical information and advice on understanding, identifying and responding to child sexual abuse. Remember, it is never a child’s responsibility to prevent abuse, protect themselves or make the abuse stop. But by better understanding child sexual abuse, having conversations and highlighting concerns, we can all play a role in better protecting children.

By Samantha Weston, Clare Griffiths and Anne-Marie Day 

Louise Casey’s review revealed a series of concerns about London Metropolitan Police concluding that institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia pervades across the whole organisation. Acknowledging that police legitimacy is under threat, some have called for the police to be defunded. Drawing on data collected via a survey and focus groups with children and young people from traditionally unheard minoritised groups attending a community-based programme, this article reveals low levels of satisfaction with and trust of the police among this group. In contrast, activities based and created within young people’s own communities provided opportunities to be safe, protected and among people they trusted. Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, we suggest that the call to ‘defund the police’ may not be the radical alternative that many would have us believe and instead call to ‘refund civil society’ by advocating for a ‘community first’ approach to resolve complex social problems.

By Robin S. Engel, Nicholas Corsaro, Gabrielle T. Isaza, Hannah D. McManus, University of Cincinnati

In recent months, law enforcement officers have been faced with an unprecedented set of circumstances, navigating major social unrest in communities amid a pandemic and economic crisis. Acknowledging the dangers to both the community and officers, efforts have intensified to identify “solutions” to reduce the frequency and severity of violent encounters between police and the public. Calls for the adoption of “de-escalation” policies and training – widely endorsed by policy makers, policing experts, and the public – have been especially strong, and recent statistics on law enforcement practices suggest the field has responded (Engel et al., 2020b). For example, in a 2019 national survey of 155 large police departments in the United States, nearly all responding agencies indicated they offered some form of de-escalation training to officers in their agency (CBS, 2019). Although the implementation of de-escalation training is often encouraged, the effects of this training on police officers and their interactions with the public has not been systematically evaluated (Engel et al., 2020a). For this reason, the impact of de-escalation training on the frequency and severity of officers’ use of force and the subsequent injuries to citizens and officers is not well understood. It was within this context that the Louisville (KY) Metro Police Department (LMPD) stepped forward to both deliver and participate in the evaluation of a deescalation training. Specifically, the LMPD introduced the Police Executive Research Forum’s (PERF) Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) training program to instruct officers in de-escalation tactics and critical thinking skills for the management of potentially volatile police-citizen encounters. Seeking to understand the effectiveness of this training, the LMPD partnered with the International Association of Chiefs of Police/University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy (IACP/UC Center) to conduct an independent, external evaluation of the effects of the ICAT training on their agency. This report documents the methodology and findings of the evaluation of ICAT training implemented within the LMPD. This study represents one of the first large-scale, methodologically rigorous evaluations of a well-known de-escalation training for police. Specifically, this study uses a multi-method approach, relying upon two distinct survey designs (i.e., repeated measure survey design, cross-sectional survey design) to assess the impact of training on the perceptions and self-reported experiences of officers and first-line supervisors, and a stepped-wedge randomized control trial design to examine training effects on officers’ behaviors and changes in the outcomes of police-citizen encounters. This seminal study is the first randomized control trial to demonstrate a significant reduction in officer use of force following de-escalation training implementation.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

The U.S. medicolegal death investigation system is responsible for investigating and providing determinations of cause and manner of death, playing a vital role in the nation's public health and criminal justice systems. Recent, high-profile deaths in custody cases have drawn widespread attention to the determinations of cause and manner of death made by forensic pathologists, medical examiners, and coroners, and questions have been raised about the scientific validity of such determinations.

Strengthening the U.S. Medicolegal Death Investigation System: Lessons from Deaths in Custody evaluates the handling of deaths in police custody by the medicolegal death investigation system and recommends actions to strengthen the nation's medicolegal death investigation system.