By Jason Johnson and Sean Kennedy

Consent decrees are a blunt instrument for enacting police reform. The approach has proven ill-suited at enacting effective change in law enforcement agencies. These coercive reforms face institutional resistance from departments and their personnel and fall victim to mission creep from the unaccountable lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats who oversee the design and later the implementation of the reforms. The situation worsened significantly as the Obama Administration increased the use of consent decrees, a policy resumed under the Biden Department of Justice. Often built on limited and flimsy evidence, the Justice Department’s allegations against police agencies put local jurisdictions in a near impossible position to contest civil rights violations findings. Additionally, the Justice Department frequently injects its policy preferences into the required remedies that do not reflect urgent or even necessary changes, but policy agenda of the Civil Rights Division and the White House. Subject jurisdictions are often compelled to accept settlements with unachievable compliance goals and required to spend vast sums to remedy problems outside the scope of the statutory requirements. Consent decrees are not a quick, easy, or inexpensive fix. And this type of settlement can have consequences – higher crime, lower police morale, ballooning costs, drifting timelines, and dissatisfied residents. In many cases, consent decrees prove to be damaging boondoggles rather than bolstering effective and constitutional policing. Federal intervention for some agencies may still be necessary but less onerous and more effective tools exist for enacting necessary reforms. Those alternatives should be preferred where possible. The Justice Department’s interventions in law enforcement agencies should be precise in their methods and practicable in their goals. This paper examines:

• the origins and process of police consent decrees;

• the increasing use of consent decrees to enact police reform policies;

• the consequences of police reform by consent decree; and

• the alternative approaches to improving American policing.

Alexandria, VA: Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, 2023. 24p.

By Robin S. Engel, Hannah D. McManus, and Gabrielle T. Isaza

In post-Ferguson America, police departments are being challenged to implement evidence-based changes in policies and training to reduce fatal police-citizen encounters. Of the litany of recommendations believed to reduce police shootings, five have garnered widespread support: body-worn cameras, de-escalation training, implicit bias training, early intervention systems, and civilian oversight. These highly endorsed interventions, however, are not supported by a strong body of empirical evidence that demonstrates their effectiveness. guided by the available research on evidence-based policing and informed by the firsthand experience of one of the authors in implementing departmental reforms that followed the fatal shooting of a civilian by an officer, this article highlights promising reform strategies and opportunities to build the evidence base for effective use-of-force reforms. We call upon police executives to engage in evidence-based policing by scientifically testing interventions, and we call on academics to engage in rapid research responses for critical issues in policing.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 146–165. 2020

By Joanna C. Schwartz

For decades, scholars have debated the extent to which financial sanctions cause government officials to improve their conduct. Yet little attention has been paid to a foundational empirical question underlying these debates: When a plaintiff recovers in a damages action against the government, who foots the bill? In prior work, I found that individual police officers virtually never pay anything toward settlements and judgments entered against them. But this finding prompts another question: Where does the money come from, if not from individual officers? The dominant view among those who have considered this question is that settlements and judgments are usually paid from jurisdictions’ general funds with no financial impact on the involved law enforcement agencies, and some have suggested that agencies would have stronger incentives to improve behavior were they required to pay settlements and judgments from their budgets. But, beyond anecdotal information about the practices in a few large agencies, there has been no empirical inquiry into the source of funds used by governments to satisfy suits involving the police.

In this Article, I report the results of the first nationwide study to examine how cities, counties, and states budget for and pay settlements and judgments in cases against law enforcement. Through public records requests, interviews, and other sources, I have collected information about litigation budgeting practices in one hundred jurisdictions across the country. Based on the practices in these one hundred jurisdictions, I make two key findings. First, settlements and judgments are not always—or even usually—paid from jurisdictions’ general funds; instead, cities, counties, and states use a wide range of budgetary arrangements to satisfy their legal liabilities. All told, half of the law enforcement agencies in my study financially contribute in some manner to the satisfaction of lawsuits brought against them.

Second, having a department pay money out of its budget toward settlements and judgments is neither necessary nor sufficient to impose a financial burden on that department. Some law enforcement agencies pay millions from their budgets each year toward settlements and judgments, but the particularities of their jurisdictions’ budgeting arrangements lessen or eliminate altogether the financial impact of these payments on these agencies. On the other hand, smaller agencies that pay nothing from their budgets toward lawsuits may nevertheless have their very existence threatened if liability insurers raise premiums or terminate coverage in response to large payouts.

63 UCLA L. Rev. 1144 (2016)

By Emilee Green, Brian Kuczynski, Morgan McGuirk and Jessica A. Reichert

Repeated and deadly encounters between law enforcement officers and Black Americans have given way to mounting calls for police reform. Reformers have proposed reallocating funds from policing to communities and social services, rethinking police use of force policies, and improving measures for officer accountability. This literature review briefly describes the impetus for police reform, reviews proposed police reforms, and examines available research on the effectiveness of police reforms. Overall, research indicates police agencies should not only focus on reducing crime, but also protecting and fostering the relationship between the public and police.

Chicago: Illinois 2022. 20p.

By Ian Loader

The question of the police mission – ‘what are the police for?’ – is a recurring and contested one in British public life. So much so that there are good reasons to be weary of another ride over this well-trodden ground. The debate has long circled around the same set of dilemmas, the same binary oppositions. Are the police a law enforcement, crime-fighting agency or are they a 24/7 social service doing whatever is necessary to maintain and repair order? Should they focus on reacting to calls for assistance (so-called fire brigade policing) or be proactively engaged in and with communities seeking to prevent crime and safeguard the vulnerable? Are the police the thin-blue-line that delineate order from chaos and keep the ‘law-abiding majority’ safe or do their powers present an ever-present risk to minority rights and require constant oversight and tight cabining within the rule of law? Debate between these alternatives recurs with seemingly little hope of progress or satisfactory resolution, but rather, it seems, repetitive back and forth between adherents of one pole or another. The value of a further foray into this barren territory is not therefore self-evident. It stands in need of justification. Within police circles, this sense of weary repetition tends to prompt one of two responses. The first is to default to a list of all the tasks that the police are unavoidably called upon to undertake. Such a list typically includes emergency response, crime prevention, criminal investigation, keeping the peace, social service, reassurance, national security, regulating public protest, traffic control and, these days, safeguarding vulnerable groups. This is arguably the approach taken by the 1962 Royal Commission on the Police, who categorised police functions in the following terms: 1. The maintenance of law and order and protection of persons and property. 2. The prevention of crime. 3. The detection of criminals. 4. Controlling of road traffic and advising local authorities on traffic questions. 5. Carrying out certain duties on behalf of government departments. 6. Befriending anyone who needs help and being available at any time to cope with minor or major emergencies

London: Police Foundation, 2020. 20p.

By Cynthia Lum, Christopher S. Koper, and Xiaoyun Wu

The protests following the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 led to contentious discussions and debates in many cities about policing, with some calling to “defund the police.” However, this debate has generally proceeded without adequate research about either the scale or nature of issues that the police handle and the potential consequences of the proposed reform efforts. To respond to this research gap, we analyze millions of 911 calls for service across nine U.S. agencies. We report on the types of calls for service that the police handle, including how frequently different calls arise, how much time agencies spend on different categories of calls, and the outcomes of those calls. We find that the amount and types of incidents for which people call the police are voluminous, with the vast majority not obviously transferable to other organizations or government sectors without significant resource expenditures or adjustments. However, if the police retain these responsibilities, they also need to reconsider how they can more effectively address community concerns.

Police Quarterly 2022, Vol. 25(3) 255–280

By Charles Fain Lehman

In 2019, the Chicago Police Department (CPD)—one of the most controversial police departments in the nation—was placed under a federally enforced consent decree that mandates sweeping reforms and subjects the department to the supervision of a court-appointed independent monitor. Although implementation of the decree is still ongoing, this report reviews the preliminary evidence of its effects. Across a variety of indicators, it seems that the consent decree has not had an appreciable effect on police conduct or public perception of the department. And there is at least some evidence that the process leading up to the consent decree exacerbated Chicago’s already-substantial crime problem. While prior research on consent decrees suggests that they can sometimes have an effect, that outcome is far from certain, casting further doubt on the prospects of Chicago’s decree. Why is the consent decree having little or no measurable impact? It may be the result of unwillingness on the part of CPD and the city to embrace reform. Alternatively, the consent decree’s ineffectiveness may be attributed to preexisting reforms that CPD had already implemented on its own before the decree took effect. Both of these explanations, however, cast doubt on the viability of the federal investigation and consent decree process as a tool for achieving police reform.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2023. 21p.

By Roman Gabriel Rivera

There is growing demand for reforms to the U.S. criminal justice system. Nevertheless, there are significant questions and relatively few answers. This dissertation studies multiple U.S. criminal justice system issues using detailed administrative data from Cook County, Illinois: Does policing the police increase crime? Does the composition of a police officer's academy cohort influence their future outcomes? Is pretrial electronic monitoring an attractive alternative to pretrial release and detention? To answer these questions, I use administrative data from Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, on the Chicago Police Department, Cook County Jail, and Circuit Court of Cook County, and a range of econometric methods.

In Chapter 1, I study the effect of pretrial electronic monitoring (EM) as an alternative to pretrial release and pretrial detention (jail) in Cook County, Illinois. EM often involves a defendant wearing an electronic ankle bracelet that tracks their movement and aims to deter pretrial misconduct. Using the quasi-random assignment of bond court judges, I estimate the effect of EM versus release and EM versus detention on pretrial misconduct, case outcomes, and future recidivism. I develop a novel method for the semiparametric estimation of marginal treatment effects in ordered choice environments, with which I construct relevant treatment effects. Relative to release, EM increases new cases pretrial due to bond violations while reducing new cases for low-level crimes and failures to appear in court. Relative to detention, EM increases low-level pretrial misconduct but improves defendant case outcomes and reduces cost-weighted future recidivism. Finally, I bound EM's pretrial crime reduction effect. I find that EM is likely an adequate substitute for pretrial detention. However, it is unclear that EM prevents enough high-cost crime to justify its use relative to release, particularly for defendants who are more likely to be released.

Chapter 3, joint with Bocar Ba, studies and differentiates between the effects of oversight and outrage on policing. Previous studies estimating the impact of police oversight on crime rely on major policing scandals as shocks to examine the impact of oversight on crime. We argue that the simultaneous effect of public outrage on officer behavior and crime contaminates these results, and we provide a conceptual framework that distinguishes between oversight and outrage. We identify two events relating to unexpected court rulings in Chicago that increased oversight and caused a decline in reported misconduct but had virtually no public reaction. Despite the decrease in reported misconduct, crime and officer activity were unaffected. We contrast this with a major policing scandal, after which we find both a rise in crime rates without an equivalent increase in arrests and a decline in officer stops and use of force. Our results suggest that police oversight can reduce misconduct without increasing crime.

New York: Columbia University, 2023. 299p.

By The International Crisis Group

What’s new? In 2022, President Xiomara Castro’s left-leaning government took power in Honduras. She promised to craft a community-oriented approach to public safety, reduce the army’s role and fight corruption. Public frustration with rampant crime, however, prodded her to pursue tough emergency measures ahead of reform. Why does it matter? Despite a slight fall in homicides, Honduras remains the second most violent country and the most dangerous for women in Latin America. Widespread violence, economic stagnation and dire humanitarian conditions in parts of the country are fuelling an exodus of Hondurans, mostly to the U.S., Mexico and Spain. What should be done? Rather than allowing law enforcement needs to crowd out reform, the government should address both issues. It should focus on strengthening police, combating impunity and investing in gang-affected communities – and not rely on the present emergency measures. Donors should work with the government where possible, notwithstanding frustration with Castro’s foreign policy.

Latin America Report N°100. Brussels: The Crisis Group, 2023. 35p.

By Canice Prendergast

We study LAPD police reforms after the Rampart scandal, when formal oversight rose discretely in 1998, and then fell in late 2002. We offer a simple model to interpret how police behavior is affected by changed accountability to the public. We show how officers responded by a practice they labeled “drive and wave”. The arrest-to-crime rate fell 40% after accountability to the public rose, then rebounded to its original level when accountability fell. For the “victimless” crimes of narcotics and prostitution, arrests fall almost 50% and then rebound. No such effects arise for the Los Angeles Sheriff Department, even for those stations surrounded by areas policed by the LAPD. We also see no effects on arrests made by other agencies within the LAPD’s jurisdiction. This impact was greatest in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, and felt least in White communities. Other behavioral responses - use of force and street stops - tell a similar story. We argue that much of the response may be attributable to an imbalance between oversight done by suspects compared to that done by the victims of crime. We also document an impact on homicides.

Chicago: University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, 2021. 63p.

By Taeho Kim

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) have received extensive attention as a key reform to restore police legitimacy. I study the causal effects of BWCs on law enforcement outcomes by conducting a nationwide study of BWCs across 947 agencies that adopted BWCs between 2014 and 2016 in the US. I find that BWCs led to decreases in the use of force but the increased oversight did not reduce crime control activities. By examining social media usage from Twitter, I also find suggestive evidence that BWC adoption has improved public opinion toward the police.

Unpublished paper, 2019. 84p.

By Jamein Cunningham, Donna Feir and Rob Gillezeau

Do collective bargaining rights for law enforcement result in more civilian deaths at the hands of the police? Using an event-study design, we find that the introduction of duty to bargain requirements with police unions has led to a significant increase in non-white civilian deaths at the hands of police during the late twentieth century. We find no impact on various crime rate measures and suggestive evidence of a decline in police employment, consistent with increasing compensation. Our results indicate that the adoption of collective bargaining rights for law enforcement can explain approximately 10 percent of the total non-white civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement between 1959 and 1988. This effect is robust to a contiguous county approach, accounting for heterogeneity in treatment timing, and numerous other specifications. While the relationship between police unions and violence against civilians is not clear ex-ante, our results show that the popular notion that police unions exacerbate police violence is empirically grounded.

Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics , 2021. 75p.

By David Spencer

As a new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is appointed, Policy Exchange has published our report, “‘Policing Can Win’: The New Commissioner’s First 100 Days” by David Spencer, Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime & Justice.

The central thesis to this report is that ‘Policing Can Win’ over those who would commit crime and disorder in our communities. In addition to summarising the core issues the Met has faced over the last five years, this report sets out the three areas where substantial changes must be made:

Leadership at Every Level: Providing the leadership that the officers and staff of the Met need to effectively fight crime and keep the public safe. Fighting Crime and Reconnecting with the Public: Reigniting the tradition that only by working closely with the public will the police be successful in retaining the public’s confidence, fighting crime and disorder, and keeping the public safe. Police Officer Conduct and Competence:Eliminating from policing those who are incompetent or would break the public’s trust in policing by committing criminality or misconduct.

• More.....

  DeDuring and by the end of the Commissioner’s first 100 days in office, things need to feel different.Different to the men and women of the Met, different to those who hold the Commissioner to account, and most importantly different to Londoners. This report seeks to give the Commissioner a head start.scription text goes here

London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 67p.

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By Amy Farrell, Jack McDevitt and Stephanie Fahy

Though recognition of the importance and severity of human trafficking has grown in recent years, the identification and investigation of human trafficking cases remains a complex undertaking for local law enforcement. Effectively responding to human trafficking requires officers to notice and identify victims who often have been hidden from or had poor relationships with law enforcement in the past (e.g., women in prostitution, migrants, immigrant community member, and poor women). Sometimes officers may be reluctant to intervene in sex and labor trafficking situations due to a belief that victims were complicit with their own victimization. Local law enforcement response is further complicated by immigration issues since many local agencies have made a decision to not inquire about citizen status during routine policing activities as a means of building trust and confidence in the local community. Additionally, the crime of human trafficking may take backseat to other institutional priorities such as violence and drugs. Finally, officers must look at old problems or traditional crime categories such as prostitution through a different lens and therefore reclassify "offenders" such as prostitutes as victims.

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  Since the enforcement of the law in the United States is predominately carried out by the thousands of local, county and state agencies representing diverse environments and local crime problems and coming from a variety of different organizational structures, fully understanding how law enforcement perceives and responds to the problem of human trafficking in the United States necessitates inquiry into the specific experiences of these agencies. The majority of research on law enforcement responses to human trafficking to date has focused on the experiences of a narrow number of large municipal police departments who were perceived to be most likely to come into contact with incidents of human trafficking. In response, this project addresses four main areas: 1) the perceptions of trafficking held by law enf rcement and the preparation agencies have taken to address the problem, 2) the frequency in which law enforcement identifies and investigates cases of human trafficking and 3) the characteristics of those cases investigated by law enforcement and 4) the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases. Description text goes here

Boston: Northeastern University, Institute on Race and Justice, 2008. 256p.

By William H. Sousa and George L. Kelling

This study evaluates explanations that have been advanced for the sharp decline in crime in New York City during the 1990s. The authors consider arguments that crime in New York City during the 1990s. The authors consider arguments that crime drops have been the result of socio-economic factors, such as an improving economy, falling numbers of teenaged males, and declining use of crack cocaine. They also consider the argument that police interventions—particularly the enforcement of laws against minor crimes, known as "broken windows" policing—played a major role.

New York: Manhattan Institute, Center for Civic Innovation, 2001. 32p.

By Juan Felipe García, Daniel Mejia, and Daniel Ortega .

The Plan Nacional de Vigilancia Comunitaria por Cuadrantes (PNVCC) is a new police patrolling program introduced in the eight major cities of Colombia in 2010 by the National Police. The strategy divides the largest cities into small geographical areas (cuadrantes), assigns six policemen to each, establishes a new patrolling protocol involving more community contact, and holds officers accountable for crime in their assigned area. The plan warranted a comprehensive training program for over 9,000 police officers aimed at improving interpersonal skills and implementation of the new patrolling protocols. By staggering the training schedule between three randomly chosen cohorts of police stations, we generate experimental variation in the exposure to training and in the effective implementation of the new police protocols induced by the Plan Cuadrantes. Comparing the 4 months immediately after training with the same months from the previous year, we find a significant reduction in several types of crime attributable to the training program, ranging from around .13 of a standard deviation for homicides to .18 of a standard deviation for brawls. These impacts are driven by very large effects in high crime areas and very small -or zero- effects in low crime neighborhoods. Once we take into account the high spatial concentration of crime, the estimated effects account for an overall reduction in the number of homicides of about 22%. We suggest that the training program affected crime by increasing the patrol police’s sense of accountability to the population and also possibly through higher police motivation. Large efficiency gains in public service provision may be attainable with relatively inexpensive interventions that bring public servants closer to their clients.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE, 2013. 27p.

By Ana María Ibáñez, Amy Ritterbusch, Catherine Rodríguez

This paper uses a natural experiment to identify the impact of a judicial system reform on police behavior. The study finds that, after a decrease in the severity of judicial punishment imposed on Colombian adolescents, arrest rates for adolescents in most misdemeanor crimes decreased due to a change in police behavior. The magnitude of this effect ranged between 0.08 to 0.321 standard deviations. The uncertainty on how to operate the new system, the lack of training, and the potential disciplinary sanctions led police officials to reduce arrest rates. Nonetheless, police forces learned gradually how to operate within the new system and adjusted their operations, countervailing the initial negative impact on arrest rates. We present suggestive evidence that the reduction in arrest rates and the lower sanctions increased crime incidents in cities with a large proportion of adolescents in their population. Qualitative evidence collected in focus groups with police officials supports the principal quantitative findings and contextualize the obstacles that led to the decrease in arrest rates and the perceived increase of juvenile crime based on the officials' experiences in the streets.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE, 2017, 36p

Edited by Kempe Ronald Hope. Sr.

Much of the literature on police corruption and police reforms is dominated by case studies of societies classified as developed. However, under the influence of globalization, developing societies have become a focal point of scholarly interest and examination. Police Corruption and Police Reforms in Developing Societies provides critical analyses of the extent and nature of police corruption and misconduct in developing societies. It also examines police reform measures that have been implemented or are still necessary to control and mitigate the effects of police corruption in developing societies. This book offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of the causes and consequences of police corruption. It also relates lessons learned from police reform efforts that have been made in a wide cross section of developing societies spanning several continents.

Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016. 270p.

By Alexander Mayer-Rieckh

Security sector reform (SSR) and transitional justice processes often occur alongside each other in societies emerging from conflict or authoritarian rule, involve many of the same actors, are supported by some of the same partner countries and impact on each other. Yet the relationship between SSR and transitional justice, or â dealing with the pastâ (DwP) as it is also called, remains underexplored and is often marked by ignorance and resistance. While SSR and transitional justice processes can get into each otherâ s way, this paper argues that SSR and DwP are intrinsically linked and can complement each other. SSR can make for better transitional justice and vice versa. Transitional justice needs SSR to prevent a recurrence of abuses, an essential element of justice. SSR can learn from transitional justice not only that it is better to deal with rather than ignore an abusive past but also how to address an abusive legacy in the security sector. The validity of these assumptions is tested in two case studies: the police reform process in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995 and the SSR process in Nepal after 2006.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2018. 79p.

By Erica Marat

In most Soviet successor states, the police militia are among the least trusted government agencies. The police are frequently seen as representatives of the state who are allowed to persecute ordinary citizens, extort bribes, and protect the real criminals. This leads to cycles of mutual antagonism in which society does not expect the police to perform their function properly, and the police are unable to enforce state regulation of society. In the examples of Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in this monograph, Dr. Erica Marat examines which domestic processes will likely fail and which have a chance to succeed in changing the post- Soviet police from a punitive institution into a more democratic entity. Dr. Marat demonstrates that the fundamental element of police reform in the post-Soviet context must be a redefinition of what constitutes the legitimate use of violence against civilians to maintain order in everyday life and during mass protests. It means toning down the use of forceful methods against the unruly and redefining which crimes must be prosecuted. In the course of the reform, the government must relinquish its ability to control the thoughts and actions of opponents and the people. Instead of being used as a punitive instrument of oppression, the postauthoritarian police must learn to behave in a transparent, accountable way, by respecting the rights of citizens. Importantly, new venues and forms of interaction between society and the police should emerge, while a country's chief police agency should become responsive to the concerns of the public. The police must begin to work on behalf of the public, not the regime, and to obey the rule of law, not government orders. Essentially, democratic police reform in the post-Soviet or any context means entrusting the citizenry to police the police

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College,Strategic Studies Institute, 2013. 74p.