The Laws that Regulate Police: The Wilson Center's Policing Legislation Database
By Brandon L Garrett
In the past three years, there has been a surge of lawmaking concerning policing at the federal, state and local levels, including in response to the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and subsequent racial justice movements across the country. Unwarranted uses of force, including deadly force, are all too common in America, particularly for Black men. Unfortunately, legal barriers often prevent meaningful accountability in response to a crisis of poor police practices and actions. Some recent legislation has at times taken a more comprehensive approach towards the challenge of addressing injustices and rethinking public safety, while other legislation takes a targeted approach, and still additional legislation has addressed a range of newer issues concerning policing, including deployment of technology, data collection, officer wellbeing, behavioral health diversion, and funding. To better understand lawmaking in response to calls for reform, at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice, we began tracking the introduction of policing-related legislation in Spring 2020.1 Our database, which has been updated continually, includes over 3,800 bills — federal, state, and local — across a wide range of topics related to law enforcement from 2018 through 2022. This is the largest such database assembled.2 It is available here: policing legislation.law.duke.edu. The sheer breadth of the topics and the activity is remarkable, although only about 10 percent of these laws have been enacted. Further, we develop how counting legislation does not fully capture trends where some single pieces of legislation include wide-ranging provisions. In addition, legislation regulating police can accomplish a range of objectives and goals, including laws designed to both limit and empower local police, sometimes in the same legislation. We plan to update the database over time to track this legislation and also examine additional prior years.
Durham, NC: Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, 2023. 18p.