police corruption essay conclusion

Essay on Police Corruption

The primary objectives of police are to honor and safeguard property and life, protect the rights and freedoms of every person in the jurisdiction of the state, and maintain security and peace. To attain the goals, the police must interact with the observers and society to accomplish law as stated by the constitution of the United States of America. The interaction between the police and society should be guided by professional and ethical principles that promote the effective development of police work. However, police face a challenge in upholding commitment and integrity to maintain the credibility deposited by the citizens. They eventually violate work ethics, which negatively affects the public perception of security. Police participation in corruption affects their image and loses citizens” trust in their duties.

Police corruption is the primary threat to security organizations since it relates to work ethics. The root of police corruption is that individuals or organizations bribe the police to work in their favor in secrecy (Rosen & Kassab, 2019). These acts create a feeling of fear and insecurity among citizens and disrupt the moral principles and the institutional image of the police. Police corruption affects individual rights, public order, and crime control.

Effects of police corruption on individual rights and due process

According to the Human Rights Committee, it is the right of every individual to be treated equally without discrimination (Tankebe, 2010). In a court of law, the defendant has the right to prove innocence through a criminal trial and due prose. However, when police corruption is involved, individual law is violated, and due process is interrupted to favor the corrupt. Police corruption intrinsically excludes, distinguishes, and restricts fairness and equality. It nullifies and impairs the equal recognition exercise and enjoyment of human rights (Tankebe, 2010).

The right to be treated equally is among the significant human rights in all human rights treaties. Despite your race, ethnicity, sex, or gender, everyone should be treated equally by the state. Being corrupt is discriminatory and against the set laws and work ethics of police. Being corrupt police nullifies and impairs all people’s enjoyment, recognition, and exercise on an equal and fair footing of individual rights and freedom (Schmalleger, 2010). Therefore, it is considered an abuse of power for personal gain and to violate the law and judge in favor of the corrupt.

For instance, when the police are bribed to cover a murder case for an individual, the solid, legally obtained evidence to prove someone was killed in cold blood is likely to disappear in favor of the corrupt person, mostly the suspect. When such incidents happen, someone’s right to a fair trial and the rule of law is violated. The effects of breaching such rights are particularly grave when the target individual comes from a marginalized group such as irregular immigrants, indigenous groups, social minorities, or sexual minorities (Tankebe, 2010). The due process will have been disrupted, and faulty judgment will be made in favor of the guilty. An innocent person is likely to go to jail and suffer disproportionately from such incidences of human rights violations because their position in the corrupt society makes them vulnerable targets of corruption, and they cannot afford the cost of bribing.

Effects of police corruption on public order and crime control

The impacts of police corruption on public order and crime control are far-reaching. Having a corrupt police department compromises law’s order and basic function, making the punishment and prevention of law violation and human rights challenging to the state (Schmalleger, 2010). Corrupt police cause public mistrust of the police, making it hard to be trusted by the public and complex for them to perform their duties effectively, preventing crimes and offering protection to human rights. The institutional legitimacy and integrity of the police department are also at stake when the policing system becomes corrupt (Schmalleger, 2010). Therefore, for the public to respect the law and honor police services, there needs to be profound confidence that the police are following the law and that, whenever applying the law, they treat everyone equally as per the law and the demands of their work ethics. Failure to adhere to the law and participating in corruption will cause an increase in crime rates and weaken the ethical standards of the community and policing system. Suppose the public will perceive the policing system as the one breaking the law, and they are benefiting from the corrupt acts (Schmalleger, 2010). In that case, they are likely to lower their moral standards and be more willing to participate in criminal behaviors.

The quality of police service offered to society is also directly proportional to the number of street crimes. A corrupt police officer is equal to an absent police officer from work (Bayley & Perito, 2011). The quality of services offered by corrupt police officers is poor. A corrupt officer works for money, not to honor the work ethics and duty. Therefore, whenever a crime happens, and they are bribed, they will directly or indirectly serve in favor of those who have given a bribe. They will subtract evidence from the crime scene and omit critical information for the prosecution of the offender. Such actions give criminals the freedom to commit more crimes as long as they have enough resources to bribe the police and serve in their favor. Corrupt police will bargain with criminals, accept gratuities, take kickbacks, and fix traffic tickets to permit vices such as prostitution, gambling, illegal drinking, and the use of drugs in society (Rosen & Kassab, 2019). Such actions will cause an increase in crime rates within society and undermine public confidence in the police, harm police morale, undermine police discipline, and destroy respect for the law (Schmalleger, 2010). Therefore, an increase in police corruption increases the rate of crimes.

Controlling police corruption

Several analysts have warned that despite the many strategies used to curb police corruption, nothing has proven to be effective enough to curb police corruption (Rosen & Kassab, 2019). Police corruption is a complex problem in the United States, and therefore, it needs multi-faceted solutions. Although not all police are corrupt, most of them are corrupt. Therefore, most of these strategies for controlling police corruption should start with the social and political realities and the characteristic of the local police instead of implementing a “one size fits all” approach (Schmalleger, 2010). Strategies such as political and leadership will can play a significant role in eradicating police corruption. Although the political will is not hundred percent perfect, it is necessary to make a struggle to eradicate some police behaviors. It is a long-term approach that can significantly help contain and reduce corruption among police. According to Punch (2000), leadership and political will can be a successful struggle in eradicating some instances of police misconduct since it is an ongoing approach. Establishing a political will is a reliable strategy in police reforms since fighting corruption may challenge powerful vested interests that are likely to resist reforms. The political will strategy has proven to be reliable in Hong Kong and Singapore due to the strong political will of their leaders in reducing police corruption.

Article 18 of the United States Constitution states that public servants are responsible for any break of law or breach of the constitution if they ignore their duty or overstep their function (Punch, 2000). Similarly, the current Judicial Code states that every public servant who, in their line of duty, discovers that a crime has been committed in their area of operation they are supposed to provide every relevant data that is denounced and conducive to the appropriate authority, for the prosecution of the offender(s) (Punch, 2000). Police are this category of public servants, and therefore, they are expected to report to the corresponding authority or superiors any information regarding lawbreakers. They should also report their workmates who participate in a criminal offense or violate any of the provisions in the Code of Ethics.

Legislators should also reevaluate laws that create loopholes for police misconduct. The reassessments should be based on the recognition that the primary portion of police misconduct is promoted by laws that illegalize prostitution, the use of illegal drugs, and gambling (Punch, 2000). Therefore, legislators should decriminalize victimless crimes by legalizing and regulating them. Police corruption is a crime. Accordingly, corrupt police officers should be prosecuted. The United States government should promote the anti-corruption campaign through a culture of transparency and integrity against corruption in the public sector.

Police should adhere to their duties of maintaining law and order and stop accepting bribes and rewards regarding how they will operate. They should always adhere to the Code of Ethics and work according to what has been established by law. Any police misconduct should be met with strict punishment to enhance the making of objective decisions based on the code of conduct, ethics, and law.

Bayley, D. H., & Perito, R. (2011). Police Corruption : U.S. Institute of Peace.

Punch, M. (2000). Police corruption and its prevention. European journal on criminal policy and research, 8(3), 301-324.

Rosen, J. D., & Kassab, H. S. (2019). The fragile States, Corruption, and Crime. In Drugs, Gangs, and Violence (pp. 37-56). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Schmalleger, F. (2010). Criminal justice: A brief introduction . Pearson/Prentice Hall

Tankebe, J. (2010). Public confidence in the police: Testing the effects of public experiences of police corruption in the U.S. The British Journal of Criminology , 50(2), 296-319.

Cite This Work

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Related Essays

Action research project to determine the level of understanding about teacher leaders and how to encourage others to consider leadership opportunities, roméo antonius dallaire and post-traumatic stress disorder, psychoeducation interventions on bipolar disorder, how did leaving the european union affect interest rates and output for the uk, contemporary issues in aging, nursing competencies in patient-centered care, popular essay topics.

American Dream
Artificial Intelligence
Black Lives Matter
Bullying Essay
Career Goals Essay
Causes of the Civil War
Child Abusing
Civil Rights Movement
Community Service
Cultural Identity
Cyber Bullying
Death Penalty
Depression Essay
Domestic Violence
Freedom of Speech
Global Warming
Gun Control
Human Trafficking
I Believe Essay
Immigration
Importance of Education
Israel and Palestine Conflict
Leadership Essay
Legalizing Marijuanas
Mental Health
National Honor Society
Police Brutality
Pollution Essay
Racism Essay
Romeo and Juliet
Same Sex Marriages
Social Media
The Great Gatsby
The Yellow Wallpaper
Time Management
To Kill a Mockingbird
Violent Video Games
What Makes You Unique
Why I Want to Be a Nurse
Send us an e-mail

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Police Brutality — Police Brutality: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Police Brutality: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Categories: Police Brutality Racial Profiling

About this sample

Words: 504 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 504 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Definition and forms of police brutality, causes of police brutality, consequences of police brutality, solutions to address police brutality.

Amnesty International. (2021). Police Brutality and Accountability. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/policing/police-brutality-and-accountability/
Blumenfeld, W. J. (2016). Travesties of police community relations: Police brutality, misconduct, and corruption. Routledge.
Reiss, A. J., & Bordua, D. J. (1967). 'Dirty work' in police services. Social Problems, 14(4), 386-397.
Smith, B. W., & Holmes, M. D. (2003). Community Policing: Clarifying Police Roles: British Policing in a Changing Society. Taylor & Francis.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1736 words

8 pages / 3621 words

6 pages / 2787 words

2 pages / 801 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Police Brutality

The issue of police reform has been a topic of significant debate and discussion in recent years. The relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve has been strained, with incidents of police brutality and [...]

“Police Brutality.” Statista, Statista, [...]

Digital activism has emerged as a powerful force in combating police brutality, providing a platform for mobilization, awareness, and accountability. By harnessing the potential of social media platforms and other digital tools, [...]

Police brutality is a pervasive issue that has plagued our society for far too long. The use of excessive force by law enforcement officers not only violates the rights of the citizens they are sworn to protect, but it also [...]

The long hauling debate whether to equip police officers with body cameras or not has raised many of eyebrows. Many would believe that it will help everyone’s cause. Not necessarily, like many other controversial topics this [...]

The purpose of this argumentative essay is to demonstrate that police brutality and police corruption are correlated. Most discussions on police brutality link it to racism/racial bias. This argument builds on the understanding [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Nowadays, hardly anyone has any illusions concerning police and how police officers perform their duties. Certainly, police do provide the citizens with decent protection, offering enough security, investigating crimes, and even preventing ones. But saying that police is one hundred percent flawless and has no corruption among the officers would definitely be a lie. Despite the fact that legally, police are supposed to make sure that the law is being complied with, often, police appear on the other side of the barricade.

According to the recent records, police brutality and misconduct still exist, and its “legacy” seems to have been going on for years. A case study simply known as SOS takes the readers eight years back to 2005 and tells a story of police officers involved in “aggravated kidnapping, theft, burglary, home invasion, armed violence, and false arrest” (Hagedorn et al ., 2013).

Another case study deals with a similar issue, yet approaches the problem from a slightly different angle. The case study notoriously known as Guerrero and Martinez reports about a group of policemen who were helping a gang steal from the residents of the city. As the report says, policemen were simply “using their authority to pull people over or enter houses” (Hagedorn et al ., 2013). According to the case records, the two officers were accused of multiple thefts, multiple previous concerts with a group of persons, and covering up the latter. The given case study shows that the availability of “big money” often leads to officers breaking the law. As it is mentioned in the case, the corrupted policemen got what was coming to them: “Martinez pleaded guilty in December 2011 to charges of conspiracy and racketeering, and Guerrero pleaded guilty to similar charges in July 2012” (Hagedorn et al ., 2013).

The given cases show that, sadly enough, power abuse among the members of the police department is still an issue, and it is probably going to be as long as the means to coordinate the actions of policemen are going to be provided. Alternatively, the means to enhance moral values among policemen should be provided. Despite the attempts to eliminate the possibility of police corruption, there will always be loopholes that will help avoid the rules.

It could also be argued that restricting policemen’s ability to use weapons or mere physical force can backfire greatly. For instance, during arrest, a criminal can possibly maintain armed resistance, which leaves no other choice than to use brutal force in response. However, in the cases described above, police officers were clearly abusing their power, which means that police corruption and misconduct have to be stopped.

Therefore, it cannot be denied that corruption rates remain just as high among the present-day police as they used to be several years ago. Although the situation does not seem as deplorable as it might have, the harm is still obvious, and the situation needs to be addressed. At present, it is clear that some regulatory measures must be undertaken by the government authorities in order to stop the arbitrary rule of police and make sure that even in the most tempting situations, police officers should follow the letter of the law. However, without the initiative from people, both the victims of the police injustice and all those concerned, corruption among police officers are unlikely to be tackled any time soon.

Reference List

Hagedorn, J. et al . (2013). Crime, corruption and cover-ups in the Chicago Police Department. Web.

The Recruitment and Selection Process at the Law Enforcement Agency
Challenges of Law Enforcement in Society
Porous Materials in Industrial Chemistry
The Film "Chungking Express" by Wong Kar-Wai
Police Interrogation: Legal Issues and Limitations
American Policing: History, Contributions of Sir Robert Peel, Relationships Between the U.S. Government and Policing
Dubai Civil Defense Approved Firefighter Training
Homeland Security: Digital Crime and Terrorism Activities
Policing in American Society
Sir Robert Peel: The Impact on American Policing
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, May 13). Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong. https://ivypanda.com/essays/police-corruption-misconduct-and-brutality-when-a-good-cop-bad-cop-routine-goes-wrong/

"Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong." IvyPanda , 13 May 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/police-corruption-misconduct-and-brutality-when-a-good-cop-bad-cop-routine-goes-wrong/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong'. 13 May.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong." May 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/police-corruption-misconduct-and-brutality-when-a-good-cop-bad-cop-routine-goes-wrong/.

1. IvyPanda . "Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong." May 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/police-corruption-misconduct-and-brutality-when-a-good-cop-bad-cop-routine-goes-wrong/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong." May 13, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/police-corruption-misconduct-and-brutality-when-a-good-cop-bad-cop-routine-goes-wrong/.

Proactive Policing: Effects on Crime and Communities (2018)

Chapter: 8 conclusions and implications for policy and research, 8 conclusions and implications for policy and research.

Proactive policing is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. In this report, the committee used the term “proactive policing” to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Specifically, the elements of proactivity include an emphasis on prevention, mobilizing resources based on police initiative, and targeting the broader underlying forces at work that may be driving crime and disorder. This contrasts with the standard model of policing, which involves an emphasis on reacting to particular crime events after they have occurred, mobilizing resources based on requests coming from outside the police organization, and focusing on the particulars of a given criminal incident.

Proactive policing in this report is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. This report has documented that proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of approaches that have spread across the landscape of policing.

The United States has once again been confronted by a crisis of confidence in policing. Instances of perceived or actual police misconduct have given rise to nationwide protests against unfair and abusive police practices. Although this report was not intended to respond directly to the crisis of confidence in policing that can be seen in the United States today, it is nevertheless important to consider how proactive policing strategies may bear upon this crisis. It is not enough to simply identify “what works” for reducing crime and disorder; it is also critical to consider issues such as how proactive policing affects the legality of policing, the evaluation of the police in communities, potential abuses of police authority, and the equitable application of police services in the everyday lives of citizens.

Proactive policing has taken a number of different forms over the past two decades, and these variants often overlap in practice. The four broad approaches to proactive policing described in this report are place-based interventions, problem-solving interventions, person-focused interventions, and community-based interventions (see Table 2-1 in Chapter 2 ). Place-based interventions capitalize on the growing research base that shows that crime is concentrated at specific places within a city as a means of more efficiently allocating police resources to reduce crime. Its main applications have been directed at microgeographic hot spots. Person-based interventions also capitalize on the concentration of crimes to proactively prevent crime, but in this case it is concentration among a subset of offenders. Person-based interventions focus on high-rate criminals who have been identified as committing a large proportion of the crime in a community. Problem-solving innovations focus on specific problems that are viewed as contributing to crime incidence and that can be ameliorated by the police. In this case, a systematic approach to solve problems is used to prevent future crime. Finally, community-based interventions emphasize the role of the community in doing something about crime problems. Community approaches look to strengthen collective efficacy in the community or to strengthen the bonds between the police and the community, as a way of enhancing informal social controls and increasing cooperation with the police, with the goal of preventing crime.

In this concluding chapter, the committee summarizes the main findings for each of the four areas on which the report has focused: law and legality, crime control, community impacts, and racial disparities and racially biased behavior. For each area, we list the main conclusions reached (the conclusions are numbered according to the report chapter in which they were developed) and then provide a final, summary discussion of the findings. We then turn to the broader policy implications of the report as a whole. Finally, we offer suggestions for filling research gaps in order to strengthen the knowledge base regarding proactive policing and its impacts.

LAW AND LEGALITY

CONCLUSION 3-1 Factual findings from court proceedings, federal investigations into police departments, and ethnographic and theoretical arguments support the hypothesis that proactive strategies that use aggressive stops, searches, and arrests to deter criminal activity may decrease liberty and increase violations of the Fourth Amendment and Equal Protection Clause; proactive policing strategies may also affect the Fourth Amendment status of policing conduct. However, there is not enough direct empirical evidence on the relationship between particular policing strategies and constitutional violations to draw any conclusions about the likelihood that particular proactive strategies increase or decrease constitutional violations.

CONCLUSION 3-2 Even when proactive strategies do not violate or encourage constitutional violations, they may undermine legal values, such as privacy, equality, and accountability. Empirical studies to date have not assessed these implications.

However effective a policing practice may be in preventing crime, it is impermissible if it violates the law. The most important legal constraints on proactive policing are the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause (of the Fourteenth Amendment), and related statutory provisions.

Although proactive policing strategies do not inherently violate the Fourth Amendment, any proactive strategy could lead to Fourth Amendment violations to the degree that it is implemented by having officers engage in stops, searches, and arrests that violate constitutional standards. This risk is especially relevant for stop, question, and frisk (SQF); broken windows policing; and hot spots policing interventions if they use an aggressive practice of searches and seizures to deter criminal activity.

In addition, in conjunction with existing Fourth Amendment doctrine, proactive policing strategies may limit the effective strength or scope of constitutional protection or reduce the availability of constitutional remedies. For example, when departments identify “high crime areas” pursuant to place-based proactive policing strategies, courts may allow stops by officers of individuals within those areas that are based on less individualized behavior than they would require without the “high crime” designation. In this way, geographically oriented proactive policing may lead otherwise identical citizen-police encounters to be treated differently under the law.

The Equal Protection Clause guarantees equal and impartial treatment of citizens by government actors. It governs all policies, decisions, and acts taken by police officers and departments, including those in furtherance

of proactive policing strategies. As a result, Equal Protection claims may arise with respect to any proactive policing strategy to the degree that it discriminates against individuals based on their race, religion, or national origin, among other characteristics. Since most policing policies today do not expressly target racial or ethnic groups, most Equal Protection challenges require proving discriminatory purpose in addition to discriminatory effect in order to establish a constitutional violation.

Specific proactive policing strategies such as SQF and “zero tolerance” versions of broken windows policing have been linked to violations of both the Fourth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause by courts in private litigation and by the U.S. Department of Justice in its investigations of police departments. Ethnographic studies and theoretical arguments further support the idea that proactive strategies that use aggressive stops, searches, and arrests to deter criminal activity may decrease liberty and increase Fourth Amendment and Equal Protection violations. However, empirical evidence is insufficient—using the accepted standards of causality in social science—to support any conclusion about whether proactive policing strategies systematically promote or reduce constitutional violations. In order to establish a causal link, studies would ideally determine the incidence of problematic behavior by police under a proactive policy and compare that to the incidence of the same behavior in otherwise similar circumstances in which a proactive policy is not in place.

However, even when proactive strategies do not lead to constitutional violations, they may raise concerns about deeper legal values such as privacy, equality, autonomy, accountability, and transparency. Even procedural justice policing and community-oriented policing, neither of which are likely to violate legal constraints on policing (and, to the extent that procedural justice operates as intended, may make violations of law less likely), may, respectively, undermine the transparency about the status of police-citizen interactions and alter the structure of decision making and accountability in police organizations.

CRIME AND DISORDER

The available scientific evidence suggests that certain proactive policing strategies are successful in reducing crime and disorder. This important conclusion provides support for a growing interest among American police in innovating to develop effective crime prevention strategies. At the same time, there is substantial heterogeneity in the effectiveness of different proactive policing interventions in reducing crime and disorder. For some types of proactive policing, the evidence consistently points to effectiveness, but for others the evidence is inconclusive. Evidence in many cases is

restricted to localized crime prevention impacts, such as specific places, or to specific individuals. There is relatively little evidence-based knowledge about whether and to what extent the approaches examined in this report will have crime prevention benefits at the larger jurisdictional level (e.g., a city as a whole, or even large administrative areas such as precincts within a city) or across all offenders. One key problem that needs to be examined in this regard, but which has not been studied so far, is the degree to which specific policing programs create “opportunity costs” in terms of the allocation of police or policing resources in other domains. Furthermore, the crime prevention outcomes that are observed are mostly observed in the short term, and the evidence seldom addresses long-term crime-prevention outcomes.

It is important to note here that, in practice, police departments typically implement crime-reduction programs that include elements typical of several prevention strategies, as those strategies are defined for this report (see Chapter 2 ). Given this hybridization of tactics in practice, the committee’s review of the evidence was often hindered by the overlapping character of the real-world proactive policing interventions evaluated in many of the published research studies.

Place-Based Strategies

CONCLUSION 4-1 The available research evidence strongly suggests that hot spots policing strategies produce short-term crime-reduction effects without simply displacing crime into areas immediately surrounding targeted locations. Hot spots policing studies that do measure possible displacement effects tend to find that these programs generate a diffusion of crime-control benefits into immediately adjacent areas. There is an absence of evidence on the long-term impacts of hot spots policing strategies on crime and on possible jurisdictional outcomes.

CONCLUSION 4-2 At present, there are insufficient rigorous empirical studies on predictive policing to support a firm conclusion for or against either the efficacy of crime prediction software or the effectiveness of any associated police operational tactics. It also remains difficult to distinguish a predictive policing approach from hot spots policing at small geographic areas.

CONCLUSION 4-3 The results from studies examining the introduction of closed circuit television camera schemes are mixed, but they tend to show modest outcomes in terms of property crime reduction at high-crime places for passive monitoring approaches.

CONCLUSION 4-4 There are insufficient studies to draw conclusions regarding the impact of the proactive use of closed circuit television on crime and disorder reduction.

Policing has always had a geographic or place-based component, especially in how patrol resources are allocated for emergency response systems. However, over the past three decades scholars and the police have begun to recognize that crime is highly concentrated at specific places. Following this recognition, a series of place-based strategies have been developed in policing. In contrast to the focus of the standard model of policing, proactive place-based policing calls for a refocusing of policing on very small, “microgeographic” units of analysis, often termed “crime hot spots.” A number of rigorous evaluations of hot spots policing programs, including a series of randomized controlled trials, have been conducted.

The available research evidence suggests that hot spots policing interventions generate statistically significant short-term crime-reduction impacts without simply displacing crime into areas immediately surrounding the targeted locations. Instead, hot spots policing studies that do measure possible displacement effects tend to find that these programs generate a diffusion-of-crime-control benefit into immediately adjacent areas. While the evidence base is strong for the benefits of hot spots policing in ameliorating local crime problems, there are no rigorous field studies of whether and to what extent this strategy will have jurisdictionwide impacts.

Predictive policing also takes a place-based approach, but it focuses greater concern on predicting the future occurrence of crimes in time and place. It relies upon sophisticated computer algorithms to predict changing patterns of future crime, often promising to be able to identify the exact locations where crimes of specific types are likely to occur next. While this approach has potential to enhance place-based crime prevention approaches, there are at present insufficient rigorous empirical studies to draw any firm conclusions about either the efficacy of crime prediction software or the effectiveness of any associated police operational tactics. Moreover, it remains difficult to distinguish the police actions used in a predictive policing approach from hot spots policing at small geographic areas.

Another technology relevant to improving police capacity for proactive intervention at specific places is closed circuit television (CCTV), which can be used either passively or proactively. The results from studies examining the introduction of CCTV camera schemes are mixed, but they tend to show modest outcomes in terms of property crime reduction at high-crime places for passive monitoring approaches. Again, the committee did not find evidence that would allow us to estimate whether CCTV implemented as a jurisdictionwide strategy would have meaningful impacts on crime in that jurisdiction. As far as the proactive use of CCTV is concerned, there

are insufficient studies to draw conclusions regarding the impact of this strategy on crime and disorder.

Problem-Solving Strategies

CONCLUSION 4-5 There is a small group of rigorous studies of problem-oriented policing. Overall, these consistently show that problem-oriented policing programs lead to short-term reductions in crime. These studies do not address possible jurisdictional impacts of problem-oriented policing and generally do not assess the long-term impacts of these strategies on crime and disorder.

CONCLUSION 4-6 A small but rigorous body of evidence suggests that third party policing generates short-term reductions in crime and disorder; there is more limited evidence of long-term impacts. However, little is known about possible jurisdictional outcomes.

Problem-solving strategies such as problem-oriented policing and third party policing use an approach that seeks to identify causes of problems that engender crime incidents and draws upon innovative solutions to those problems to assess whether the solutions are effective. Problem-oriented policing uses a basic iterative process of problem identification, analysis, response, assessment, and adjustment of the response (often called the SARA [scanning, analysis, response, and assessment] model). This approach provides a framework for uncovering the complex mechanisms at play in crime problems and for developing tailored interventions to address the underlying conditions that cause crime problems in specific situations. Despite its popularity as a crime-prevention strategy, there are surprisingly few rigorous program evaluations of problem-oriented policing.

Much of the available evaluation evidence consists of non-experimental analyses that find strong associations between problem-oriented interventions and crime reduction. Program evaluations also suggest that it is difficult for police officers to fully implement problem-oriented policing. Many problem-oriented policing projects are characterized by weak problem analysis and a lack of non-enforcement responses to targeted problems. Nevertheless, even these limited applications of problem-oriented policing have been shown by rigorous evaluations to generate statistically significant short-term crime prevention impacts.

Third party policing draws upon the insights of problem solving, but also leverages “third parties” who are believed to offer significant new resources for preventing crime and disorder. Using civil ordinances and civil courts or the resources of private agencies, police departments engaged in third party policing recognize that much social control is exercised by

institutions other than the police (e.g., public housing agencies, property owners, parents, health and building inspectors, and business owners) and that crime can be managed through coordination with agencies and in ways other than enforcement responses under the criminal law. Though there are only a small number of program evaluations, the impact of third party policing interventions on crime and disorder has been assessed using randomized controlled trials and rigorous quasi-experimental designs. The available evidence suggests that third party policing generates statistically significant crime- and disorder-reduction effects. Related programs that employ Business Improvement Districts also show crime-prevention outcomes with long-term impacts, though research designs have been less rigorous in establishing causality.

Person-Focused Strategies

CONCLUSION 4-7 Evaluations of focused deterrence programs show consistent crime control impacts in reducing gang violence, street crime driven by disorderly drug markets, and repeat individual offending. The available evaluation literature suggests both short-term and long-term areawide impacts of focused deterrence programs on crime.

CONCLUSION 4-8 Evidence regarding the crime-reduction impact of stop, question, and frisk when implemented as a general, citywide crime-control strategy is mixed.

CONCLUSION 4-9 Evaluations of focused uses of stop, question, and frisk (SQF) (combined with other self-initiated enforcement activities by officers), targeting places with violence or serious gun crimes and focusing on high-risk repeat offenders, consistently report short-term crime-reduction effects; jurisdictional impacts, when estimated, are modest. There is an absence of evidence on the long-term impacts of focused uses of SQF on crime.

In the standard model of policing, the primary goal of police was to identify and arrest offenders after crimes had been committed. But beginning in the early 1970s, research evidence began to suggest that the police could be more effective if they focused on a relatively small number of chronic offenders. These studies led to innovations in policing based on the logic that crime prevention outcomes could be enhanced by focusing policing efforts on the small number of offenders who account for a large proportion of crime.

Offender-focused deterrence strategies, also known as “pulling levers,” attempt to deter crime among a particular offending population and are

often implemented in combination with problem-solving tactics. Offender-focused deterrence allows police to increase the certainty, swiftness, and severity of punishment in innovative ways. These strategies seek to change offender behavior by understanding the underlying crime-producing dynamics and conditions that sustain recurring crime problems and by implementing a blended strategy of law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions.

A growing number of quasi-experimental evaluations suggest that focused deterrence programs generate statistically significant crime-reduction impacts. Robust crime-control impacts have been reported by controlled evaluations testing the effectiveness of focused deterrence programs in reducing gang violence and street crime driven by disorderly drug markets and by non-experimental studies that examine repeat individual offending. It is noteworthy that the size of the effects observed are large, though the committee observed that many of the largest impacts are in studies with evaluation designs that are less rigorous. The committee did not identify any randomized experiments in this program area. Nonetheless, many of the quasi-experiments have study designs that create highly credible equivalence between their treatment and comparison conditions, which supports interpreting their results as evidence of causation.

While SQF has long been a law enforcement tool of policing, the landmark 1968 Supreme Court decision Terry v. Ohio provided a set of standard criteria that facilitated its use as a strategy for crime control. According to that decision, police may stop a person based upon a “reasonable suspicion” that that person may commit or is in the process of committing a crime; if a separate “reasonable suspicion” that the person is armed exists, the police may conduct a frisk of the stopped individual. While this standard means that Terry stops could not be legally applied without reference to the behavior of the individual being stopped, interpretation of that behavior gave significant leeway to the police. As a proactive policing strategy, departments often employ SQF more expansively and to promote forward-looking, preventive ends.

Non-experimental analyses of SQF broadly applied across a jurisdiction show mixed findings. However, a separate body of controlled evaluation research (including randomized experiments) that examines the effectiveness of SQF and other self-initiated enforcement activities by officers in targeting places with serious gun crime problems and focusing on high-risk repeat offenders consistently reports statistically significant short-term crime reductions.

Community-Based Strategies

CONCLUSION 4-10 Existing studies do not identify a consistent crime-prevention benefit for community-oriented policing programs. However, many of these studies are characterized by weak evaluation designs.

CONCLUSION 4-11 At present, there are an insufficient number of rigorous empirical studies on procedural justice policing to draw a firm conclusion about its effectiveness in reducing crime and disorder.

CONCLUSION 4-12 Broken windows policing interventions that use aggressive tactics for increasing misdemeanor arrests to control disorder generate small to null impacts on crime.

CONCLUSION 4-13 Evaluations of broken windows interventions that use place-based, problem-solving practices to reduce social and physical disorder have reported consistent short-term crime-reduction impacts. There is an absence of evidence on the long-term impacts of these kinds of broken windows strategies on crime or on possible jurisdictional outcomes.

The committee also reviewed the crime-prevention impacts of interventions using a community-based crime prevention approach. Such strategies include community-oriented policing, broken windows policing, and procedural justice policing. The logic models informing these community-based strategies seek to enlist and mobilize people who are not police in the processes of policing. In this case, however, the focus is generally not on specific actors such as business or property owners (as in the case of third party policing) but on the community more generally. In some cases, community-based strategies rely on enhancing “collective efficacy,” which is a community’s ability to engage in collective action to do something about crime (e.g., community-oriented policing and broken windows policing). In other cases, community-based models seek to change community members’ evaluations of the legitimacy of police actions (e.g., procedural justice policing) with the goal of increasing cooperation between the police and the public or encouraging law-abiding behavior. These goals are often intertwined in a real-world policing program.

As a proactive crime-prevention strategy, community-oriented policing tries to address and mitigate community problems (crime or otherwise) and, in turn, to build social resilience, collective efficacy, and empowerment to strengthen the infrastructure for the coproduction of safety and crime prevention. Community-oriented policing involves three core processes

and structures: (1) citizen involvement in identifying and addressing public safety concerns; (2) the decentralization of decision making to develop responses to locally defined problems; and (3) problem solving. Problem solving and decentralization acquire a community-oriented policing character when these process elements are embedded in the community engagement (often called “partnership”) element.

Although the committee identified a large number of studies of community-oriented policing programs, many of these programs were implemented in tandem with tactics typical of other approaches, such as problem solving. This was not surprising, given that basic definitions of community policing used by police departments often included problem solving as a key programmatic element. The studies also varied in their outcomes, reflecting the broad range of tactics and practices that are included in community-oriented policing programs, and many of the studies were characterized by weak evaluation designs. With these caveats, the committee did not identify a consistent crime prevention benefit for community-oriented policing programs.

Procedural justice policing seeks to impress upon citizens and the wider community that the police exercise their authority in legitimate ways. When citizens accord legitimacy to police activity, according to this logic model, they are more inclined to defer to police authority in instances of citizen-police interaction and to collaborate with police in the future, even to the extent of being more inclined not to violate the law. There is currently only a very small evidence base from which to support conclusions about the impact of procedural justice policing on crime prevention. Existing research does not support a conclusion that procedural justice policing impacts crime or disorder outcomes. At the same time, because the evidence base is small, the committee also cannot conclude that such strategies are ineffective.

Broken windows policing shares with community-oriented policing a concern for community welfare and envisions a role for police in finding ways to strengthen community structures and processes that provide a degree of immunity from disorder and crime in neighborhoods. Unlike the community-oriented policing strategy, it does not emphasize the coproductive collaborations of police and community as a mode of intervention; rather, it focuses on what police should do to establish conditions that allow “natural” community entities to flourish and promote neighborhood order and social/economic vitality. Implementations of broken windows interventions vary from informal enforcement tactics (warnings, rousting disorderly people) to formal or more intrusive ones (arrests, citations, stop and frisk), all of which are intended either to disrupt the forces of disorder before they overwhelm a neighborhood’s capacity for order maintenance

or to restore afflicted neighborhoods to a level where intrinsic community sources of order can manage it.

The impacts of broken windows policing are mixed across evaluations, again complicating the ability of the committee to draw strong inferences. However, the available program evaluations suggest that aggressive, misdemeanor arrest–based approaches to control disorder generate small to null impacts on crime. In contrast, controlled evaluations of place-based approaches that use problem-solving interventions to reduce social and physical disorder provide evidence of consistent crime-reduction impacts.

COMMUNITY IMPACTS

There is broad recognition that a positive community relationship with the police has value in its own right, irrespective of any influence it may have on crime or disorder. Democratic theories assert that the police, as an arm of government, are to serve the community and should be accountable to it in ways that elicit public approval and consent. Given this premise and the recent conflicts between the police and the public, the committee thought it very important to assess the impacts of proactive policing on issues, such as fear of crime, collective efficacy, and community evaluation of police legitimacy.

Place-Based, Problem-Solving, and Person-Focused Interventions

CONCLUSION 5-1 Existing research suggests that place-based policing strategies rarely have negative short-term impacts on community outcomes. At the same time, such strategies rarely improve community perceptions of the police or other community outcome measures. There is a virtual absence of evidence on the long-term and jurisdiction-level impacts of place-based policing on community outcomes.

CONCLUSION 5-2 Studies show consistent small-to-moderate, positive impacts of problem-solving interventions on short-term community satisfaction with the police. There is little evidence available on the long-term and jurisdiction-level impacts of problem-solving strategies on community outcomes.

CONCLUSION 5-3 There is little consistency found in the impacts of problem-solving policing on perceived disorder, quality of life, fear of crime, and police legitimacy, except for the near-absence of backfire effects. The lack of backfire effects suggests that the risk is low of harmful community effects from tactics typical of problem-solving strategies.

CONCLUSION 5-4 Studies evaluating the impact of person-focused strategies on community outcomes have a number of design limitations that prevent causal inferences to be drawn about program effects. However, the studies of citizens’ personal experiences with person-focused strategies do show marked negative associations between exposure to stop, question, and frisk and proactive traffic enforcement approaches and community outcomes. The long-term and jurisdictionwide community consequences of person-focused proactive strategies remain untested.

Place-based, person-focused, and problem-solving interventions are distinct from community-based proactive strategies in that they do not directly seek to engage the public to enhance legitimacy evaluations and cooperation. In this context, the concerns regarding community outcomes for these approaches have often focused not on whether they improve community attitudes toward the police but rather on whether the focus on crime control leads inevitably to declines in positive community attitudes. Community-based strategies, in contrast, specifically seek to reduce fear, increase trust and willingness to intervene in community problems, and increase trust and confidence in the police.

A body of research evaluating the impact of place-based strategies on community attitudes is only now emerging; this research includes both quasi-experimental and experimental studies. However, the consistency of the findings suggests that place-based proactive policing strategies rarely have negative short-term impacts on community attitudes. At the same time, the evidence suggests that such strategies rarely improve community perceptions of the police or other community outcome measures. Moreover, existing studies have generally examined the broader community and not specific individuals who are the focus of place-based interventions at crime hot spots. As noted below, more aggressive policing tactics that are focused on individuals may have negative outcomes on those who have contact with the police. Existing studies also generally measure short-term changes, which may not be sensitive to communities that become the focus of long-term implementation of place-based policing. Finally, there has not been measurement of the impacts of place-based approaches on the broader community, extending beyond the specific focus of interventions.

The research literature on community impacts of problem-solving interventions is larger. Although much of the literature relies on quasi-experimental designs, a few well-implemented randomized experiments also provide information on community outcomes. Studies show consistent positive short-term impacts of problem-solving strategies on community satisfaction with the police. At the same time, however, the research base lacks estimates of larger jurisdictional impacts of these strategies.

Because problem-solving strategies are so often implemented in tandem with tactics typical of community-based policing (i.e., community engagement), it is difficult to determine what role the problem-solving aspect plays in community outcomes, compared to the impact of the community engagement element. Although this fact makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions about “what” is impacting community attitudes, as we note below, it may be that implementing multiple approaches in tandem can also have more positive outcomes for police agencies.

While there is evidence that problem-solving approaches increase community satisfaction with the police, we found little consistency in problem-solving policing’s impacts on perceived disorder/quality of life, fear of crime, and police legitimacy. However, the near-absence of backfire (i.e., undesired negative) effects in the evaluations of problem-solving strategies suggests that the risk of harmful community effects from problem-solving strategies is low. As with place-based approaches, community outcomes generally do not examine people who have direct contact with the police, and measurement of impacts is local as opposed to jurisdictional.

The body of research evaluating the impact of person-focused strategies on community outcomes is relatively small, even in comparison with the evidence base on problem-solving and place-based strategies; the long-term community consequences of person-focused proactive strategies also remain untested. These studies involve qualitative or correlational designs that make it difficult to draw causal inferences about typical impacts of these strategies. Correlational studies do find strong negative associations between exposure to the strategy and the attitudes and orientations of individuals who are the subjects of aggressive law enforcement interventions (SQF and proactive traffic enforcement). Moreover, a number of ethnographic and survey-based studies have found negative outcomes, especially for Black and other non-White youth who are continually exposed to SQFs. The studies that measure the impact on the larger community show a more complicated and unclear pattern of outcomes.

Community-Based Interventions

CONCLUSION 6-1 Community-oriented policing leads to modest improvements in the public’s view of policing and the police in the short term. (Very few studies of community-oriented policing have traced its long-term effects on community outcomes or its jurisdictionwide consequences.) These improvements occur with greatest consistency for measures of community satisfaction and less so for measures of perceived disorder, fear of crime, and police legitimacy. Evaluations of community-oriented policing rarely find “backfire” effects on community attitudes. Hence, the deployment of community-oriented policing

as a proactive strategy seems to offer prospects for modest gains at little risk of negative consequences.

CONCLUSION 6-2 Due to the small number of studies, mixed findings, and methodological limitations, no conclusion can be drawn about the impact of community-oriented policing on collective efficacy and citizen cooperative behavior.

CONCLUSION 6-3 The committee is not able to draw a conclusion regarding the impacts of broken windows policing on fear of crime or collective efficacy. This is due in part to the surprisingly small number of studies that examine the community outcomes of broken windows policing and in part to the mixed effects observed.

CONCLUSION 6-4 In general, studies show that perceptions of procedurally just treatment are strongly and positively associated with subjective evaluations of police legitimacy and cooperation with the police. However, the research base is currently insufficient to draw conclusions about whether procedurally just policing causally influences either perceived legitimacy or cooperation.

CONCLUSION 6-5 Although the application of procedural justice concepts to policing is relatively new, there are more extensive literatures on procedural justice in social psychology, in management, and with other legal authorities such as the courts. Those studies are often designed in ways that make causal inferences more compelling, and results in those areas suggest that the application of procedural justice concepts to policing has promise and that further studies are needed to examine the degree to which the success of such strategies in those other domains can be replicated in the domain of policing.

The available empirical research on community-oriented policing’s community effects focuses on citizen perceptions of police performance (in terms of what they do and the consequences for community disorder), satisfaction with police, and perceived police legitimacy. The evidence suggests that community-oriented policing leads to modest improvements in the community’s view of policing and the police in the short term. This occurs with greatest consistency for measures of community satisfaction and less so for measures of perceived disorder, fear of crime, and perceived legitimacy. Evaluations of community-oriented policing rarely find “backfire” effects from the intervention on community attitudes. Therefore, the deployment of community-oriented policing as a proactive strategy seems to offer prospects of modest gains at little risk of negative consequences.

Broken windows policing is often evaluated directly in terms of its short-term crime control impacts. We have emphasized in this report that the logic model for broken windows policing seeks to alter the community’s levels of fear and collective efficacy as a method of enhancing community social controls and reducing crime in the long run. While this is a key element of the broken windows policing model, the committee’s review of the evidence found that these outcomes have seldom been examined. The evidence was insufficient to draw any conclusions regarding the impact of broken windows policing on community social controls. Studies of the impacts of broken windows policing on fear of crime do not support the model’s claim that such programs will reduce levels of fear in the community, at least in the short run.

While there is a rapidly growing body of research on the community impacts of procedural justice policing, it is difficult to draw causal inferences from these studies. In general, the studies show that perceptions of procedurally just treatment are strongly correlated with subjective evaluations of police legitimacy. The extant research base on the impacts of procedural justice proactive policing strategies on perceived legitimacy and cooperation was insufficient for the committee to draw conclusions about whether procedurally just policing will improve community evaluations of police legitimacy or increase cooperation with the police.

Although this committee finding may appear at odds with a growing movement to encourage procedurally just behavior among the police, the committee thinks it is important to stress that a finding that there is insufficient evidence to support the expected outcomes of procedural justice policing is not the same as a finding that such outcomes do not exist. Moreover, although the application of procedural justice to policing is relatively new, there is a more extensive evidence base on procedural justice in social psychology and organizational management, as well as on procedural justice with other legal authorities such as the courts. Those studies are often designed in ways that make causal inferences more compelling, and results in those areas suggest meaningful impacts of procedural justice on the legitimacy of institutions and authorities involved. Thus, the application of procedural justice ideas to policing has promise, although further studies are needed to examine the degree to which the success of such implementations in other social contexts can be replicated in the arena of policing.

RACIAL BIAS AND DISPARITIES

CONCLUSION 7-1 There are likely to be large racial disparities in the volume and nature of police–citizen encounters when police target high-risk people or high-risk places, as is common in many proactive policing programs.

CONCLUSION 7-2 Existing evidence does not establish conclusively whether, and to what extent, the racial disparities associated with concentrated person-focused and place-based enforcement are indicators of statistical prediction, racial animus, implicit bias, or other causes. However, the history of racial injustice in the United States, in particular in the area of criminal justice and policing, as well as ethnographic research that has identified disparate impacts of policing on non-White communities, makes the investigation of the causes of racial disparities a key research and policy concern.

Concerns about racial bias loom especially large in discussions of policing. The interest of this report was to assess whether and to what extent proactive policing affects racial disparities in police–citizen encounters and racial bias in police behavior. Recent high-profile incidents of police shootings and abusive police–citizen interaction caught on camera have raised questions regarding basic fairness, racial discrimination, and the excessive use of force of all forms against non-Whites, and especially Blacks, in the United States. In considering these incidents, the committee stresses that the origins of policing in the United States are intimately interwoven with the nation’s history of racial prejudice. Although in recent decades police have often made a strong effort to address racially biased behaviors, wide disparities remain in the extent to which non-White people and White people are stopped or arrested by police. Moreover, as our discussion of constitutional violations in Chapter 3 notes, the U.S. Department of Justice has identified continued racial disparities and biased behavior in policing in a number of major American police agencies.

As social norms have evolved to make overt expressions of bigotry less acceptable, psychologists have developed tools to measure more subtle factors underlying biased behavior. A series of studies suggest that negative racial attitudes may influence police behavior—although there is no direct research on proactive policing. There is a further growing body of research identifying how these psychological mechanisms may affect behavior and what types of situations, policies, or practices may exacerbate or ameliorate racially biased behaviors. In a number of studies, social psychologists have found that race may affect decision making, especially under situations where time is short and such decisions need to be made quickly. More broadly, social psychologists have identified dispositional (i.e., individual characteristics) and situational and environmental factors that are associated with higher levels of racially biased behavior.

Proactive strategies often facilitate increased officer contact with residents (particularly in high-crime areas), involve contacts that are often enforcement-oriented and uninvited, and may allow greater officer discretion compared to standard policing models. These elements align with

broad categories of possible risk factors for biased behavior by police officers. For example, when contacts involve stops or arrests, police may be put in situations where they have to “think fast” and react quickly. Social psychologists have argued that such situations may be particularly prone to the emergence of what they define as implicit biases.

Relative to the research on the impact of proactive policing policies on crime, there is very little field research exploring the potential role that racially biased behavior plays in proactive policing. There is even less research on the ways that race may shape police policy or color the consequences of police encounters with residents. These research gaps leave police departments and communities concerned with bias in police behavior without an evidence base from which to make informed decisions. Because of these gaps, the committee was unable to draw any concrete conclusions about the role of biased behavior in proactive policing. Consequently, research on these topics is urgently needed both so that the field may better understand potential negative consequences of proactive policing and so that communities and police departments may be better equipped to align police behaviors with values of equity and justice.

Inferring the role of racial animus, statistical prediction, or other dispositional and situational risk factors in contributing to observed racial disparities is a challenging question for research. Although focused policing approaches may reduce overall levels of police intrusion, we also detailed in Chapter 7 the very large disparities in the stops and arrests of non-White, and especially Black Americans, and we noted that concentrating enforcement efforts in high-crime areas and on highly active individual offenders may lead to racial disparities in police–citizen interactions. Although these disparities are often much reduced when taking into account population benchmarks such as official criminality, the committee also noted that studies that seek to benchmark citizen–police interactions against simple population counts or broad, publicly available measures of criminal activity do not yield conclusive information regarding the potential for racially biased behavior in proactive policing efforts. Identifying an appropriate benchmark would require detailed information on the geography and nature of the proactive strategy, as well as localized knowledge of the relative importance of the problem. Such benchmarks are not currently available. The absence of such benchmarks makes it difficult to distinguish between accurate statistical prediction and racial profiling.

Some of the most illuminating evidence on the potential impact of proactive policing and increased citizen–police contacts on racial outcomes relates to the use of SQF in New York City. This research seeks to model the probabilities that police suspicion of criminal possession of a weapon turns out to be justified, given the information available to officers when deciding whether to stop someone. This work finds substantial racial and

ethnic disparities in the distribution of these probabilities, suggesting that police in New York City apply lower thresholds of suspicion to blacks and Hispanics. We do not know whether this pattern exists in other settings.

Per the charge to the committee, this report reviewed a relatively narrow area of intersection between race and policing. This focus, though, is nested in a broader societal framework of possible disparities and biased behaviors across a whole array of social contexts. These can affect proactive policing in, for example, the distribution of crime in society and the extent of exposure of specific groups to police surveillance and enforcement. However, it was beyond the scope of this study to review them systematically in the context of the committee’s work.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

In its review of the evidence, the committee tried to identify the most credible evidence on whether particular types of proactive policing strategies have been shown to affect legality, crime, communities, racial disparities, and racially biased behavior. A strategy is said to have “impact” if it affects outcomes compared with what they would have been at that same time and place in the absence of the implementation of a specific strategy. The strongest evidence often derives from randomized field trials and natural experiments in the field, typically implemented through a change in the activities of a police department structured so as to create a credibly comparable control condition with which to compare the “treatment” condition. However, as we have emphasized throughout the report, other methodological approaches can also provide rigorous evidence for the types of outcomes that we have examined. In turn, ethnographic studies have provided important information for the committee in understanding the processes that lead to such outcomes. Nonetheless, the emphasis in many sections of our report is on the “internal validity” of the evaluation: how strong is the evidence that a particular treatment implemented in a particular place caused the observed impact? And this assessment of validity has important implications for the strength of policy recommendations that we can draw from our review.

We want to emphasize that even a well-designed experimental trial implemented with fidelity may yield biased effect estimates if the outcomes data are not reliable. Most of the studies of crime outcomes examined in this report used crime data collected by the police department that is responsible for implementing the program. With the exception of homicide and perhaps motor-vehicle theft, the police only know of a fraction of all serious crimes. Less than one-half of robberies, aggravated assaults, and burglaries are reported to the police, and of course, reporting is a precondition for inclusion in the departmental statistics. That fact does not

negate the usefulness of these data in measuring impact, but it does compel consideration of whether the intervention is likely to affect the likelihood that a crime will be reported to and recorded by the police. For example, if a community-based policing intervention has the effects of both reducing crime and increasing the percentage of crimes reported to the police, the result might be that the latter will mask the former and obscure the crime-reduction effect. We note this possibility as a potential challenge to the internal validity of even well-designed and faithfully implemented experimental interventions, if they rely solely on police data.

Data that are collected by researchers may also have serious weaknesses. In some of the community surveys reviewed in this report, response rates were exceptionally low. A number of studies that we examined also used laboratory data; the laboratory environment allows a great deal of control over the research process but can be criticized as artificial and as a poor indicator of what actually happens in the field in policing.

More generally, we want to point to three specific limitations when it comes to the usefulness of this review in informing policy choice. First, the literature that we reviewed typically lacks much information on the magnitudes of the effects of the strategies evaluated. A clear demonstration that the “treatment effect” is greater than would be expected by chance—that is, that the estimated effect is statistically significantly different from zero—helps establish that the program “worked” but not that it was “worthwhile” from a policy perspective. A more complete evaluation would require a comparison of the estimated magnitude of the effect with an estimate of the costs of the program. How many serious crimes were prevented by the candidate program for every $100,000 worth of resources devoted to it, and what are the effects of removing that $100,000 from what it would otherwise have been used for? For a police chief or city mayor, resources are limited and must be accounted for in making well-informed choices about policing practice. This problem becomes even more difficult when one is trying to calculate costs and benefits for such outcomes as community satisfaction or perceived legitimacy. The literature rarely provides such a cost-effectiveness analysis, and hence this committee cannot provide policy proscriptions that would give specific advice about the costs or cost savings.

Second, and closely related, is that the evaluation evidence, because it typically does not account for cost, may actually provide a misleading impression of whether a program “worked”—whether in reducing crime or improving community attitudes for the entire jurisdiction—as opposed to having an effect only for the segment of the city represented by the treatment group. As we have noted throughout the report, most evaluations provide a local estimate of program impacts. They do not report how the program affected the jurisdiction overall. Absent such reports, or at least

evidence-grounded estimates of jurisdiction-level impact, it is very difficult to provide guidance to police executives about how redeployment of resources will impact overall trends across a city. Since most of the evaluations we reviewed assess local impacts only, we often do not know what the impacts of a program will be on the broader community when a program is broadly applied, as opposed to when it is implemented on a small scale.

Third, a police chief who is considering adopting a particular innovation may be able to make a prediction about whether it will reduce crime or improve community attitudes, based on evaluations of one or more similar programs, but that prediction must always be hedged by the constraint that making inferences about “here and now” based on “there and then” is a tricky business. A well-known example comes from the “coerced abstinence” program for drug-involved convicts known as HOPE. The program originated and was carefully evaluated in courts in Honolulu, Hawaii, where it appeared very effective. It has been replicated a number of times on the mainland United States, with at best mixed results. The variability in results may reflect differences in the quality of implementation by the law enforcement agencies, the modal type of drug of abuse (which differs among jurisdictions), or other factors. 1 To the extent that programmatic effects are moderated by the characteristics of the target population and the implementing agency, then importing a program that appears promising into another setting can lead to disappointment. The uncertainties created by this “external validity” problem for evaluating field trials cannot be readily quantified. A common-sense view is that a single evaluation is not enough to establish a strong case for adoption in a different time and place and that understanding potential modifiers of the effects is important for evidence-based policy.

However, while acknowledging these caveats, the committee thinks that we can provide broad policy guidance regarding what the science of policing is today and how that might affect the choices that police executives make. Waiting until the evidence base is fully developed to draw from science in policy making is not only unrealistic—it also means that practitioners will not benefit from what is known already. Our report provides important knowledge for policing, knowledge that can help inform the debate about what the police should be doing. Nonetheless, as we have noted, there are important limitations in how existing knowledge can be used, and those limitations should be considered when drawing upon the science in this report.

A number of identifiable policing strategies provide evidence of consistent short-term crime-prevention benefits at the local level. These in-

___________________

1 For a discussion of HOPE, see the special issue of Criminology & Public Policy (November 2016), Volume 15, Issue 4.

clude hot spots policing, problem-oriented policing, third party policing, SQF targeted to violent and gun-crime hot spots, focused deterrence, and problem-solving efforts incorporated in broken windows policing. What these approaches have in common is their effort to more tightly specify and focus police activities. Police executives who implement such strategies are drawing upon evidence-based approaches. At the same time, the ability to generalize from existing evaluations to the broader array of at least larger American cities is sometimes limited by the limited number and scope of studies that are available, though in the case of hot spots policing a larger number of studies across diverse contexts have been carried out. We also find that these strategies, with the important exception of SQF, do not lead to negative community outcomes. With the caveats noted above, it appears that crime-prevention outcomes can be obtained without this type of unintended negative consequence. Albeit preliminary, this finding reinforces the policy relevance of these evidence-based approaches.

At the same time, the results of our review suggest that police executives should not view certain proactive policing approaches as evidence based, at least at this time. For instance, SQF indiscriminately focused across a jurisdiction or broken windows policing programs relying on a generalized approach to misdemeanor arrests (“zero tolerance”) have not shown evidence of effectiveness. This caveat, combined with research evidence that documents negative individual outcomes for people who are the subject of aggressive police enforcement efforts, even in the absence of clear causal interpretation, should lead police executives to exercise caution in adopting generalized, aggressive enforcement tactics. Moreover, our review of the constitutional basis for focusing police resources on people or places suggests that issues of legality are particularly relevant in the case of such strategies. Even in the case of focused programs for which there is evidence of crime-control success, when aggressive approaches such as SQF are employed, police executives must consider and actively try to prevent potential negative outcomes on the community and on legality, and they should cooperate with researchers attempting to quantify and evaluate these issues. This means not only that police executives should proceed with caution in adopting such strategies but also that agencies that are already applying them broadly and without careful focus should consider scaling down present efforts.

The committee’s findings regarding community-based strategies raise important questions about whether such approaches will yield crime-prevention benefits. Many scholars and policy makers have sought to argue that community-oriented policing and procedural justice policing will yield not only better relations with the public but also greater crime control. We do not find consistent evidence for this proposition, and police executives

should be accordingly wary of implementing community-based strategies primarily as a crime-control approach.

The committee also concluded that community-oriented policing programs were likely to improve evaluations of the police, albeit modestly. Accordingly, if the policy goal of an agency is to improve its relationship with the communities it serves, then community-oriented policing is a promising strategy choice, although we are unable to offer a judgment on whether the benefits are sufficient to justify the expected costs. Our review of policing programs with a community-based approach also suggests that police executives may want to consider applying multiple strategies as a more general agency approach. The difficulty of distinguishing the effects of community-based and problem-solving approaches that are often implemented together has been noted numerous times in this report. However, we also think that better outcomes may be obtained when programs are hybridized across the approaches defined in this report. If, for example, an agency seeks to improve both crime prevention and community satisfaction with the police, it seems reasonable to combine practices typical of community-oriented policing with evidence-based crime-prevention practices typical of strategies such as hot spots policing or problem-oriented policing. This has already been done in problem-solving approaches that emphasize community engagement, where these dual benefits have been observed.

Existing studies do not provide evidence of crime prevention effectiveness in the case of proactive procedural justice policing. Accordingly, the committee believes that caution should be used in advocating for such approaches on the ground that they will reduce crime. At the same time, studies reviewed by the committee did not find that procedural justice policing has the expected positive community outcomes. Does this mean that police should not encourage procedural justice policing programs? We think that this would be a serious mistake for two reasons. The first is simply that procedural justice reflects the behavior of police that is appropriate in a democratic society. Procedural justice encourages democratic policing even if it may not change citizen attitudes. The second reason relates to the state of research in this area. While it is a mistake to draw strong conclusions that procedural justice policing will improve community members’ evaluations of police legitimacy or cooperation with the police, it is equally wrong to draw the conclusion that it will not do so. Again, the evidence base here is too sparse to support either position.

RESEARCH GAPS

While there is a large body of evaluation research in policing today, as contrasted with two or three decades ago, the committee identified a

number of key gaps in what is known about proactive policing. Filling such gaps in the evidence base is critical for developing the type of knowledge that, as we noted earlier, is necessary to inform policy decisions for policing. Policing in the United States represents a large commitment of public resources; it is estimated to cost federal, state, and local governments more than $125 billion per year ( Kyckelhahn, 2015 ). Given that investment, the extent of the research gaps on proactive policing is surprising. For the police to take advantage of the revolution in police practices that proactive policing represents, they will need the help of the federal government and private foundations in answering a host of questions regarding effectiveness, community outcomes, legality, and racially biased behavior. The committee also noted an imbalance in the evidence base across the areas of the committee’s charge. While far from complete, there is a large body of credible causal evidence on the impact of proactive policing on crime rates. However, social science research of a similar form on other equally important outcomes of policing is only beginning to occur.

We think it also important to note at the outset that more research needs to be focused on the standard model of policing. The 2004 National Research Council report, Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence , argued that there was little evidence supporting such standard police practices as random police patrol across large areas, follow-up investigations, and rapid response to citizen calls for service. However, a number of new studies have been carried out since the 2004 study, and this recent research suggests that the view of the standard model of policing in that report may need to be reassessed (see, e.g., Chaflin and McCrary, 2017 ; Evans and Owens, 2007 ; Cook, 2015 ). In order to estimate the benefits of proactive policing efforts, more information is needed on whether standard policing practices are generating crime-prevention benefits, as well as sustaining and perhaps improving the community’s trust in and regard for the police.

Improving the Quality of Data and Research on Proactive Policing

Drawing conclusions about the efficacy of proactive policing strategies or about policing innovations more broadly is complicated by the absence of comprehensive data on police behavior in the field. Just because a policy has been formally adopted does not mean that officers on the beat behave according to the tenets of that policy. The impact of the adoption of a policy on any outcome is, essentially, a combination of the actual impact of a police agency adopting, for example, a place-based intervention, and the probability that officers actually implement this intervention as they engage in targeted patrol in particular places. Identifying ways to measure what police officers actually do is, therefore, a central problem for evaluat-

ing the impact of proactive policing strategies on crime, communities, and the legality of officer behavior.

To be useful for evaluating the impact of a proactive policing strategy on what officers do in the field, it is necessary for the data to, at minimum, measure officer behavior both before and after the policy change. Ideally, the data would span multiple agencies, thereby allowing for a more credible analysis of what officers might have done in the absence of the policy change. There have been some examples of efforts by governments to proactively develop such data sources. Such efforts include the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Use-of-Force Data Collection project, the Police Data Initiative in the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) in the U.S. Department of Justice, and the proactive efforts in California to require local agencies to report information on all stops to that state’s Office of the Attorney General (CA AB 953). 2 Similarly, there are a number of academic and nonprofit efforts to augment police data collection efforts and thereby provide enhanced analytic capacity, such as the Center for Policing Equity’s National Justice Database and the Stanford Open Policing Project. 3 Substantially more effort needs to be devoted to collecting reliable data on how proactive policing is carried out in the field. 4 Without the routine collection of such data, it is not possible to assess the prevalence and incidence of proactive policing or to characterize the content of such strategies.

The committee also noted more general weaknesses in existing studies that limit the conclusions that can be drawn. One important limitation is that proactive policing interventions often overlap in terms of the strategies represented by the elements of the intervention. For example, many place-based policing interventions include elements of a problem-solving approach, as do many community-based programs. While we recognize that the police and program developers are focused on crime prevention and not on identifying the specific components of a program that have impact, the mixing of elements from different approaches makes it extremely difficult to draw strong conclusions about which element(s) in a program had a crime-prevention impact. Therefore, it is very important in future research to develop study designs that allow identification of the specific mechanisms that produce impacts.

2 See https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB953 [November 2016].

3 See http://mashable.com/2017/02/23/google-racial-justice-commitment/#8KbrqmHvKkqjhttp://observer.com/2016/02/traffic-stops-database/ [November 2016].

4 Interesting new opportunities for such data collection have been taken advantage of by researchers. For example, S. Weisburd (2016) used GPS data on exactly where police cars are in Dallas, Texas, at small intervals of time to draw inferences about the effectiveness of police patrol in small areas.

More generally, it is important for evaluations to focus on the underlying logic models that are proposed to account for (or promise) program impacts. Broken windows policing, for example, was conceived as a method for increasing community social controls in the long run. However, very few studies of broken windows policing actually examine how police activities in reducing disorder will impact such long-term attitudes. This is true for many of the proactive policing strategies examined in this report. Research funding agencies should require the incorporation of tests of the validity of underlying logic models in their study solicitations.

The focus on short-run, rather than long-run, impacts also pervades the evaluation of crime incidence, which is the most researched outcome the committee examined. Seldom do researchers look at program impacts extending for more than a year after program initiation, and only a handful of the studies identified by the committee look at crime prevention in the long run. While research indicates that many proactive practices seem to create a crime-reduction effect in the short term, the long-term impacts of these programs also should be an important focus of study. And whereas most of the available research that measures community effects does so over a relatively short term (a year or less), it is likely that community effects—especially those involving people who have little or no direct contact with the police—require much longer to register. Some research suggests that community effects are dynamic, but that research has generally not examined effects over several years. For all these reasons, more research is needed that tracks the effects of proactive policing over several years.

With regard to the types of research conducted, more implementation and process evaluations are needed to better understand the challenges of getting programs and policies translated into police practice, as well as to better understand the actual practices that are being evaluated in terms of community outcomes. The standardization of measures of implementation and dosage for specific strategies will improve the capacity of systematic reviews of these studies to interpret an array of findings. In turn, in many areas there is a need for more rigorous evaluation designs—and especially the development of well-implemented randomized trials.

In looking at the studies reviewed in this report, the committee notes that most are concentrated in large, urban jurisdictions. Smaller, suburban, and rural jurisdictions are understudied, but they should be included in the mix of funded evaluations. Community dynamics in such jurisdictions may vary in ways not revealed in the studies of larger communities. Evaluations should also control for the larger organizational context in which policing programs operate. Little is known about how the structure of a department and, for example, its management style affects its ability to develop and sustain proactive policing programs that reduce crime while enhancing the legitimacy and legality of police officers’ actions. Further research is also

needed on how these outcomes are affected by police oversight and accountability mechanisms, including review boards, lawsuits, data disclosure requirements, and the standardized collection of data on officer activities (as recommended above).

Finally, the committee notes the absence of rigorous research on training of police. Training has been shown to change behavior in other settings, particularly management. Police training programs for proactive policing are recent, and there is very little evidence at this time about their long-term effects. Several recent studies suggest that training programs can influence officers’ attitudes toward, and behavior within, communities. Studies need to examine the impact of training on police officers’ orientations and behaviors. Expanding the Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies, and in particular identifying which agencies hire graduates, as opposed to simply how many agencies, is a possible first step that would facilitate linking officer training to actual field outcomes. It is especially important for future research to evaluate which training approaches and methods prove most effective for imparting the necessary will and skill required to implement a given proactive strategy well.

Proactive Policing and the Law

There is less research on how proactive policies influence the legality of officer behavior than on how those policies affect crime or community perceptions of crime. One of the hurdles is the absence of a clear measure of what, exactly, constitutes legal behavior on an officer’s part. Research on how to quantify the legality of police officer behavior in a way that is consistent with the law and lends itself to causal analysis is a necessary first step. Because of the complex issues involved, such research is likely to be most productive if conducted by members of the legal, social science, and police leadership communities in collaboration.

Researchers studying the impacts of proactive policies on citizen lawbreaking, using experimental or quasi-experimental designs and administrative data, also should identify the relevant legal standards for officer behavior and include measures of officer behavior that are affected by these standards as one of their assessed outcomes. Ethnographic, qualitative, and mixed methods social science research, as well as legal scholarship, should inform how quantitative researchers conceptualize these measures. Given that officer law-breaking is as important, if not more so, in a general evaluation of such policies as undesirable behavior on the part of citizens, researchers who have access to administrative data that measure and make reliable legal judgments about officer behavior, including data collected by body-worn cameras, should include assessment of such outcomes in their analysis of the policies’ impacts on crime by citizens.

Crime-Control Impacts of Proactive Policing

As noted above, while the committee has provided a series of conclusions regarding the crime- and disorder-control impacts of proactive policing, there are significant caveats that limited our ability to develop specific policy prescriptions. Given the importance of the policing enterprise and its impacts on U.S. society, we think that a major investment in research on proactive policing is warranted, with a complementary investment in assessing standard policing practices.

A better understanding is needed of the crime-prevention effects of proactive policing programs relative to each other and relative to such activities as crime investigation, response to 911 calls, and routine patrol. For example, which types of proactive activities create a greater deterrent effect in a crime hot spot: foot patrol, technological surveillance (such as CCTVs), problem-solving projects, enforcement activities, or situational crime-prevention strategies? Can gun crimes be best reduced through focused deterrence/pulling levers, pedestrian and traffic stops, or crime prevention through environmental design?

Equally important to the relative deterrent effect of proactive policing approaches are the social costs and collateral consequences of those approaches. At the most basic level, identifying other effects than crime reduction of proactive policing approaches—positive or negative—is needed. Once identified, measuring for these effects when testing for the crime prevention effects of proactive policing should be included in study designs.

A key issue in place-based studies is whether crime displaces to other areas. There is now a strong literature showing that immediate geographic displacement is not common, and studies instead point to a diffusion of crime control benefits to areas near targeted hot spots. However, little is known about displacement to more distal areas and whether such displacement affects the crime prevention benefits of place-based strategies. Study of distal displacement needs to be a central feature of the next generation of research on place-based policing. Most evaluations also provide only local estimates of impacts, and it is critical to examine whether place-based strategies implemented across cities will have jurisdictional impacts. Estimating the size of jurisdictional impacts for strategies such as hot spots policing is critical for police executives and policy makers as they consider the wider benefits of these approaches.

More research is also needed on how technology contributes to the crime prevention effects of proactive policing strategies. There has been relatively little research on the impacts of technology in policing beyond technical, efficiency, or process evaluations. More studies of the crime-control impacts of license plate readers, body-worn cameras, gun-shot detection technologies, forensic technologies, and CCTV are needed. Furthermore,

the effectiveness of analytic technologies such as crime analysis and predictive policing software applications also remains under-researched. Given their increased use in proactive policing strategies, much more needs to be known.

To date, there are no rigorous outcome evaluations of law enforcement proactive interventions designed to reduce and prevent technology-related crime, such as cybercrime, fraud and theft using the Internet, or hacking. Proactive activities by federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security remain completely immune from public-domain evaluation in this and all other aspects of their proactive efforts.

Finally, it is important to determine whether community-oriented or procedural justice approaches can produce crime prevention effects. While improving citizen reaction to police activity is an important goal in and of itself, equally important—and connected to this goal—is the detection, prevention, reduction, and control of crime. Perhaps community-oriented or procedural justice approaches can be combined with other effective practices from the place-based, person-focused, or problem-solving approaches to attain both goals. But to date, the effectiveness of community-oriented and procedural justice interventions in crime control is uncertain.

Community Impacts of Proactive Policing

While there is broad recognition of the importance of community impacts of proactive policing strategies, there are only a few studies available on the community impacts of place-based and person-focused strategies, and the results for most types of outcomes are varied. A more extensive menu of observational, quasi-experimental, and experimental evaluations is needed. Systematic assessment of the contingent nature of outcomes is needed. Moreover, although a variety of logic models propose to account for the role that various community outcomes play in the process of affecting crime and disorder levels and community perceptions and behaviors, these logic models have not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests.

A gap noted throughout the research on community impacts is the lack of studies of the long-term effects of proactive strategies. Regardless of the rigor of the evaluation design in terms of inferring causal linkages between strategies and community outcomes, the extant literature provides only an ahistorical, incomplete, and potentially misleading perspective on what the consequences of proactive strategies will be. Future research should take into account both the long-term exposure of research subjects to proactive policing and the need to track the community consequences of those strategies over years, not months. Both variation in the accumulation of dosage over extended time and the consequences of this extended exposure are

virtually unexplored. Whether and how much a pattern of consequences is sustained or decays is also important to know.

One approach to changing community perception of police legitimacy is to change police behavior during contacts with the public. There is considerable evidence in the social psychology literature suggesting that personal contacts can change attitudes. However, there is insufficient research on the likelihood that one personal contact with a police officer can change orientations that have built up over a lifetime, irrespective of how the police behave during that single contact. Studies of the impact of a single experience with the police on a person’s general orientation toward the police are relatively few, and the results are mixed. Research is needed that tests the ability of a single interaction to shape general views about police legitimacy. This work needs to consider different types of encounters. It also needs to take account of characteristics of the person being stopped (race, age, gender, trust in the police) and that person’s history of encounters with the police. Finally, there needs to be a broader consideration of impacts on communities and the inevitable interactions between what the police do in a community and how that activity affects the development trajectory of that community, not only with respect to crime but also for housing, economic development, and other social outcomes.

Racial Bias and Disparities in Proactive Policing

The committee believes that the area of racial disparity and racially biased behavior is a particularly important one for enhancing the rigor and quantity of research on proactive policing. The committee identified five areas where research is most urgently needed with regard to racially biased behavior and proactive policing: (1) psychological risk factors, (2) training on bias reduction, (3) attention to behavioral bias as an important outcome of research on crime reduction, (4) an emphasis on assessing “downstream” consequences of proactive policing on racial outcomes, and (5) an emphasis on “upstream” influences regarding how proactive policing approaches are adopted.

First, a focus is needed on the psychological mechanisms of racially biased police behavior in actual field contexts, not only in laboratory simulations. As we reviewed in Chapter 7 , research in social psychology has identified a number of risk and protective factors that in laboratory settings are associated with either an increase or decrease in racially biased behaviors, even in subjects who do not appear to harbor racial animus. Many situations common in proactive policing map onto these factors. In spite of the potential relevance of the laboratory findings, there is virtually no evidence about whether or not police contexts or trainings produce sufficient protections against those risks in the field. A systematic approach to

these risk factors in proactive policing would be an important step toward producing an evidence base for evaluating racial disparities in proactive policing.

Second, rigorous research is needed on whether police training in this area affects actual police behavior. Even though there have been large investments in police training to address racial bias and disparate treatment, there are at present no rigorous studies that inform these efforts.

Third, the incidence of racially biased behavior and of racial disparities in outcomes should become an important outcome metric for research on proactive policing. To date, outcome evaluations in policing have focused primarily on crime control and at times on community satisfaction or perceived legitimacy. Seldom have studies assessed racial outcomes of proactive policing, despite the fact that these outcomes constitute a key issue for policy in American society. Assessing disparate impacts in policing in an informative way will require spatially detailed demographic information about the population at risk of encountering the police when the policy is in place, in order to identify an appropriate benchmark and identify the marginal person affected by the policy. Until standardized metrics for measuring racially biased behavior are available, along with measures of the populations exposed to proactive policing policies, thorough assessments of proactive policing efforts will likely require formal empirical analysis, as well as qualitative and ethnographic analysis, of proactive strategies, their implementation, and their impacts.

Fourth, understanding the downstream consequences of racial disparities is an urgent research need. Does proactive policing have a long-term impact on racial disparities or race relations in communities? What are the costs of such impacts, and can and should they be compared to the crime-control benefits of proactive policing? As we argued in Chapter 7 , proactive policing may lead to long-term decreases in inequalities in communities because of the benefits of lowered crime and related social consequences of crime. But little is known about such issues to date. To weigh these potential costs of proactive policing against the crime-reducing benefits, researchers must develop some metric for quantifying and estimating the cost of racial disparities, racially biased behavior, and racial animus. Survey techniques commonly used for cost-benefit research in environmental economics may be a useful guide.

Finally, the committee identified very little research on what drives law enforcement agencies to adopt proactive police policies. The history of criminal justice and law enforcement in the United States, along with ethnographic evidence on how police actions are perceived in communities, suggests that the role of race and ethnicity in the adoption of policing practices should be carefully assessed. However, scholars of proactive policing have yet to study carefully how race may influence the adoption of specific

proactive policing policies. It is critically important to understand not only the impacts of proactive policing on racial outcomes but also how race may affect the adoption of specific types of proactive policing. This was a concern raised to us by representatives of such groups as The Movement for Black Lives and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (see Chapter 7 and Appendix A ). Are more aggressive proactive policing strategies more likely to be chosen when Black or disadvantaged communities are the focus of police enforcement? This question needs to be addressed systematically in future research.

THE FUTURE OF PROACTIVE POLICING

Proactive policing has become a key part of police efforts to do something about crime in the United States. This report supports the general conclusion that there is sufficient scientific evidence to support the adoption of some proactive policing practices. Proactive policing efforts that focus on high concentrations of crimes at places or among the high-rate subset of offenders, as well as practices that seek to solve specific crime-fostering problems, show consistent evidence of effectiveness without evidence of negative community outcomes. Community-based strategies have also begun to show evidence of improving the relations between the police and public. At the same time, there are significant gaps in the knowledge base that do not allow one to identify with reasonable confidence the long-term effects of proactive policing. For example, existing research provides little guidance as to whether police programs to enhance procedural justice will improve community perceptions of police legitimacy or community cooperation with the police.

Much has been learned over the past two decades about proactive policing programs. But now that scientific support for these approaches has accumulated, it is time for greater investment in understanding what is cost-effective, how such strategies can be maximized to improve the relationships between the police and the public, and how they can be applied in ways that do not lead to violations of the law by the police.

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred.

Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing.

Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

Discussion and Conclusion

First Online: 15 September 2017

Cite this chapter

James F. Albrecht 2

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Criminology ((BRIEFSPOLICI))

2536 Accesses

Incidents of police deviance, albeit rare, have tarnished the reputation and image of many police officials and departments across the United States. By distinctly clarifying the categories of police deviance and identifying the most obvious underlying criminological explanations for these unacceptable actions, police administrators and policy makers can implement considerable measures to improve individual and organizational integrity and to take steps to deter police corruption, criminality, brutality, and other acts of serious misconduct from occurring. It is imperative that all efforts be made to ensure that the police profession maintains the highest ethical standards while effectively engaging in crime control and public service. Ultimately, police organizations must aim for the highest levels of public trust and confidence, integrity, and transparency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

Aamodt, M. G. (2000). The role of the I/O psychologist in police psychology. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 15 , 8–10.

Article Google Scholar

Aamodt, M. G. (2004). Research in law enforcement selection . Boca Raton, FL: Brown Walker Press.

Google Scholar

Albrecht, J. F. (2011a). Three decades of policing reform in the New York City Police Department. In J. F. Albrecht & D. K. Das (Eds.), Effective crime reduction strategies: International perspectives . Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Albrecht, J. F. (2011b). Analyzing the implementation and evolution of community policing in the United States and Scandinavia. In M. Guzman, A. M. Das, & D. K. Das (Eds.), Strategic responses to crime: Thinking globally, acting locally . Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Albrecht, J. F. (2013, October). Corruption control through effective leadership: Understanding police deviance. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Philadelphia.

Albrecht, J. F. (2017, February). Critical concepts of police leadership . Presentation at the Norwegian Police College, Oslo, Norway.

Arrigo, B. A., & Claussen, N. (2003). Police corruption and psychological testing: A strategy for preemployment screening. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 47 (3), 272–290.

Baker, A., & Goldstein, J. (2011, October 28). Unsealed indictments shed light on procedures for ticket-fixing by officers . New York Times . http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/in-ticket-fixing-scandal-16-officers-to-be-charged.html

Barker, T., & Carter, D. L. (1993). Police deviance (3rd ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Company.

Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44 , 1–26.

Bartol, C. R. (1991). Predictive validation of the MMPI for small-town police officers who fail. Professional Psychology Research and Practice, 22 , 127–132.

Becker, G. (1968). Crime and punishment. Journal of Political Economy, 76 (2), 196–217.

Bonsignore v. City of New York 521 F. Supp. 394, aff’d 683 F.2d 635, 2nd Cir. (1982).

Burbeck, E., & Furnham, E. (1984). Personality and police selection: Trait differences in successful and non-successful applicants to the metropolitan police. Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, 5 (3), 257–263.

Colaprete, F. A. (2012). Pre-employment background investigations for public safety professionals . Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Book Google Scholar

Colquhoun, P. (1975). A treatise on the police of the metropolis . Patterson Smith Reprint Series in Criminology, Law Enforcement and Social Problems (7th ed.), Publication No. 42 (reprinted 1969).

COPS Office. (2015). President’s task force on 21st century policing implementation guide: Moving from recommendations to action . Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Cosgrove, C. A., & McElroy J. E. (1986). The fixed tour experiment in the 115th precinct: Its effects on police officer stress, community perceptions, and precinct management . Executive Summary. New York: Vera Institute of Justice.

Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO personality inventory and new five factor inventory: Professional manual . Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Costello, R. M., Schneider, S. L., & Schoenfeld, L. S. (1996). Validation of a preemployment MMPI index correlated with disciplinary suspension days of police officers. Psychology, Crime and Law, 2 , 299–306.

Costello, R. M., Schoenfeld, L. S., & Kobos, J. (1982). Police applicant screening: An analogue study. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38 (1), 216–221.

Crank, J. P., & Caldero, M. A. (1999). Police ethics: The corruption of noble cause . Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Company.

Dantzker, M. L. (2011). Psychological pre-employment screening for police candidates: Seeking consistency if not standardization. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 42 (3), 276–283.

Detrick, P., & Chibnall, J. T. (2006). NEO PI-R personality characteristics of high performing entry-level police officers. Psychological Services, 3 , 274–285.

Elkins v. United States 364 U.S. 206. (1960).

Erikson, K. T. (1962). Notes on the sociology of deviance. Social Problems, 9 , 307–314.

Fyfe, J. J., Jones, P. R., Kane, R., & Silver, C. (2002). Bad cops: A study of career-ending misconduct among New York City police officers. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Chicago, IL.

Fyfe, J. J., & Kane, R. (2006). Bad cops: A study of career-ending misconduct among New York City police officers . Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.

Gaylord, M. S., & Galliher, J. F. (1988). The criminology of Edward Sutherland . Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Gips, M. (1998). A corrupt personality? Security Management, 42 (9), 14.

Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem-oriented policing . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Haberfeld, M. R., Klockars, C. B., Kutnjak Ivkovich, S., & Pagon, M. (2000). Police officer perceptions of the disciplinary consequences of police corruption in Croatia, Poland, Slovenia, and the United States. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, 1 (1), 41–72.

Hardy v. Town of Hayneville 50 F.Supp.2d 1176 M.D. Ala. (1999).

Hargrove, G. E., & Hiatt, D. (1989). Use of the California Psychological Inventory in law enforcement officer selection. Journal of Personality Assessment, 53 , 267–277.

Hargrove, G. E., Hiatt, D., & Gaffney, T. W. (1988). F + 4 + 9 + Cn: An MMPI measure of aggression in law enforcement officers and applicants. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 16 , 268–273.

Harris, D. A. (2009). How accountability-based policing can reinforce—Or replace—The fourth amendment exclusionary rule. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 7 , 149.

Hickman, M. J., Piquero, A. R., Lawton, B. A., & Greene, J. R. (2001). Applying Tittle’s control balance theory to police deviance. Policing, 24 (4), 497–519.

Hunt, J., & Manning, P. (1993). The social context of police lying. In K. Delos (Ed.), Deviant behavior . New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department. (1991). Report of the independent commission on the Los Angeles police department . Los Angeles: Independent Commission on the LAPD.

Inwald, R. E., & Brockwell, A. L. (1991). Predicting the performance of government security personnel with the IPI and MMPI. Journal of Personality Assessment, 56 (3), 522–535.

Inwald, R. E., & Shusman, E. J. (1984). The IPI and MMPI as predictors of academy performance for police recruits. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 12 (1), 1–11.

Johnson, L. B. (1965, March 8). Special message to the congress on law enforcement and the administration of justice. Online by G. Peters & J. T. Woolley, The American presidency project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26800

Kappeler, V. E., Sluder, R. D., & Alpert, G. P. (1998). Forces of deviance: Understanding the dark side of policing (2nd ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Katzenbach, N. D. (1967). The challenge of crime in a free society: A report by the president’s commission on law enforcement and administration of justice . Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.

Kavanaugh, J. J. (2010). No back-up needed: How veteran New York City cops struggled through the summer of 1975, when New York City went broke . Oakland, OR: Red Anvil Press.

Klockars, C. B., Kutnjak Ivkovich, S., & Haberfeld, M. R. (2003). The contours of police integrity . Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Knatz, H. F., Inwald, R. E., Brockwell, A. L., & Tran, L. N. (1992). IPI and MMPI predictions of counterproductive job behaviors by racial group. Journal of Business and Psychology, 7 , 189–201.

Kornfield, A. D. (1995). Police officer candidate MMPI-2 performance: Gender, ethnic and normative factors. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51 , 536–540.

Mara, W. (2009). Perspectives on civil unrest in the 1960s: Riots and their aftermath . New York: Benchmark Books.

Mass, P. (1973). Serpico, the cop who defied the system . New York: The Viking Press.

McAlary, M. (1989). Buddy boys: When good cops turn bad . Kirkwood, NY: Putnam Publishing Group.

Merton, R. K. (1968). Social theory and social structure . New York: Free Press.

Miranda v. Arizona 384 U.S. 436. (1966).

Mollen, M. (1994). Commission report: Commission to investigate allegations of police corruption and the anti-corruption procedures of the police department . New York: City of New York.

New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board. (2012). History of the CCRB . NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board Website. http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/history.html

New York City Police Department. (1990). NYPD staffing needs plan . New York: NYPD Printing Office.

New York City Police Department. (1997). Courtesy, professionalism, respect . New York: NYPD Printing Office.

New York City Police Department. (2000). NYPD response to the draft “police practices and civil rights in New York City” . New York: NYPD Printing Office.

New York City Police Department. (2002). NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau Annual Report 2001 . New York: NYPD Printing Office.

New York City Police Department. (2012). NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau Annual Report 2011 . New York: NYPD Printing Office.

Packman, D. (2010). National police misconduct reporting system . Washington, DC: Cato Institute.

Pallone, N. J. (1992). The MMPI in police officer selection: Legal constraints, case law, empirical data. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 17 , 171–188.

Player, M. A. (2009). Federal law of employment discrimination in a nutshell (6th ed.). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. (1967). Report of the president’s commission on law enforcement and administration of justice . Washington, DC: White House.

Punch, M. (2000). Police corruption and its prevention. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 8 , 301–324.

Ridgeway, G. (2007). New York: Analysis of racial disparities in the New York City Police Department’s stop, question and frisk practices . Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

Rios v. United States 364 U.S. 253. (1960).

Sanders, B. A. (2008). Using personality traits to predict police officer performance. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 31 (1), 129–147.

Sarchione, C. D., Cuttler, M. J., Muchinsky, P. M., & Nelson-Gray, R. O. (1998). Prediction of dysfunctional job behaviors among law enforcement officers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 , 904–914.

Scogin, F., Schumacher, J., Gardner, J., & Chaplin, W. (1995). Predictive validity of psychological testing in law enforcement settings. Professional Psychology Research and Practice, 26 , 68–71.

Siegel, L. J. (2011). Criminology: The core (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishers.

Simmers, K. D., Bowers, T. G., & Ruiz, J. M. (2003). Pre-employment psychological testing of police officers: The MMPI and the IPI as predictors of performance. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 5 , 277–294.

Sykes, M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22 (6), 644–670.

Terry v. Ohio 392 U.S. 1. (1968).

The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. (1967). Task force report: The police . Washington, DC: USGPO.

Thompson, G. (1983). Verbal judo: Words as a force option . Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Tittle, C. (1995). Control balance: Toward a general theory of deviance . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Transparency International. (2017). Corruption perceptions index 2016 . Berlin: Transparency International.

Travis, M. A. (1994). Psychological health tests for violence-prone police officers: Objectives, shortcomings, and alternatives. Stanford Law Review, 46 (6), 1717–1770.

Trojanowicz, R., & Bucqueroux, B. (1998). Community policing: How to get started (2nd ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Company.

United States Department of Justice. (1989). Crime in the United States 1988 . Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice.

United States Department of Justice. (1990). Crime in the United States 1989 . Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice.

Vera Institute of Justice. (1984). The community patrol officer program: A pilot program in community oriented policing in the 72nd precinct . Interim Progress Report (Internal Document). New York: Vera Institute of Justice.

Wickersham Commission Reports. (1931). Report on the police, No. 14 . Washington, DC: USGPO.

Widom, C. S. (1989). The cycle of violence. Science, 244 , 160–166.

Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982). Broken windows: The police and neighborhood safety. Atlantic Quarterly, 256 , 29–38.

Workowski, E. J., & Pallone, N. J. (1999). Previously unscored pre-service MMPI data in relation to police performance over a decade: A multivariate inquiry. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 29 , 71–94.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Pace University, New York, NY, USA

James F. Albrecht

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Albrecht, J.F. (2017). Discussion and Conclusion. In: Police Brutality, Misconduct, and Corruption . SpringerBriefs in Criminology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64438-7_6

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64438-7_6

Published : 15 September 2017

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-64437-0

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-64438-7

eBook Packages : Law and Criminology Law and Criminology (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

A better path forward for criminal justice: Police reform

Download a PDF of this chapter.

Subscribe to Governance Weekly

Rashawn ray and rashawn ray senior fellow - governance studies clark neily clark neily senior vice president - cato institute.

20 min read

Below is the first chapter from “A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice,” a report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. You can access other chapters from the report here .

Recent incidents centering on the deaths of unarmed Black Americans including George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, William Green, and countless others have continued to apply pressure for wide sweeping police reform. To some, these incidents are the result of a few “bad apples.” 1

To others, they are examples of a system imbued with institutional and cultural failures that expose civilians and police officers to harm. Our article aims to combine perspectives from across the political spectrum on sensible police reform. We focus on short-, medium-, and long-term solutions for reducing officer-involved shootings, racial disparities in use of force, mental health issues among officers, and problematic officers who rotten the tree of law enforcement.

Level Setting

Violent crime has significantly decreased since the early 1990s. However, the number of mass shootings have increased and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security report being worried about domestic terrorism, even within law enforcement. Nonetheless, despite recent increases that some scholars associate with COVID-19 spillovers related to high unemployment and underemployment, violent crime is still much lower than it was three decades ago.

Some scholars attribute crime reductions to increased police presence, while others highlight increases in overall levels of education and employment. In the policy space, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 are often noted. We believe there is some validity to all of these perspectives. For example, SWAT deployment has increased roughly 1,400 percent since 1980. Coinciding with the 1986 Drug Bill, SWAT is often deployed for drug raids and no-knock warrants. 2 The death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman killed in her home in Louisville, Kentucky, is most recently highlighted as an example that demonstrates some of the problems with these tactics. 3

The 1994 Crime Bill ushered the COPS program and an increase in prisons around the country. 4 This legislation also coincided with stop-and-frisk policies and a rise in stand-your-ground laws that disproportionately disadvantaged Black Americans and led to overpolicing. It is an indisputable fact that Black people are more likely to have force used on them. In fact, Black people relative to white people are significantly less likely to be armed or be attacking at the time they are killed by police. This is a historical pattern, including during the 1960s when civil rights leaders were being beaten and killed. However, officer-involved killings, overall, have increased significantly over the past two decades. 5 And, we also know that if drugs were the only culprit, there would be drastically different outcomes for whites. Research shows that while Blacks and whites have similar rates of using drugs, and often times distributing drugs, there are huge disparities in who is arrested, incarcerated, and convicted for drug crimes. However, it is also an indisputable fact that predominately Black communities have higher levels of violent crime. Though some try to attribute higher crime in predominately Black neighborhoods to biology or culture, most scholars agree that inequitable resources related to housing, education, and employment contribute to these statistics. 6 7 8 Research documents that after controlling for segregation and disadvantage, predominately Black and white neighborhoods differ little in violent crime rates. 9

These are complex patterns, and Democrats and Republicans often differ on how America reached these outcomes and what we do about them. As a result, bipartisan police reform has largely stalled. Now, we know that in March 2021 the House of Representatives once again passed The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. States and localities are also presenting and passing a slew of police reforms, such as in Maryland where the state legislature passed the Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021. We are not here to debate the merits of these legislations, though we support much of the components, nor are we here to simply highlight low-hanging fruit such as banning no-knock warrants, creating national databases, or requiring body-worn cameras. People across the political aisle largely agree on these reforms. Instead, we aim to provide policy recommendations on larger-scale reforms, which scholars and practitioners across the political aisle agree needs to occur, in order to transform law enforcement in America and take us well into the twenty-first century. Our main themes include accountability, training, and culture.

Accordingly, our recommendations include:

Short-Term Reforms

Reform Qualified Immunity

Create National Standards for Training and De-escalation

Medium-Term Reforms

Restructure Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct

Address officer wellness.

Long-Term Reforms

Restructure Regulations for Fraternal Order of Police Contracts

Change police culture to protect civilians and police, short-term reforms.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that courts invented to make it more difficult to sue police and other government officials who have been plausibly alleged to have violated somebody’s rights. 10 11 We believe this doctrine needs to be removed. 12 13 States also have a role to play here. The Law Enforcement Bill of Rights further doubles down on a lack of accountable for bad apples.

We are not out on a limb here. A recent YouGov and Cato poll found that over 60 percent of Americans support eliminating qualified immunity. 14 Over 80 percent of Americans oppose erasing historical records of officer misconduct. In this regard, most citizens have no interest making it more difficult to sue police officers, but police seem to have a very strong interest in maintaining the policy. However, not only do everyday citizens want it gone, but think tanks including The Brookings Institution and The Cato Institute have asserted the same. It is a highly problematic policy.

Though police chiefs might not say it publicly or directly, we have evidence that a significant number of them are quite frustrated by their inability to get rid of the bad apples, run their departments in ways that align with best practices they learn at Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers and National Association of Chiefs of Police, and discipline and terminate officers who deserve to be held accountable and jeopardize not only the public perception of their own department but drag down the social standing of the entire law enforcement profession. As noted above, The Law Enforcement Bill of Rights at the state level needs to be addressed. It further doubles down on qualified immunity and removes accountability for law enforcement.

National Standards for Training and De-escalation

In 2016, Daniel Shaver was fatally shot and killed by officer Philip Brailsford. Brailsford was charged but found not guilty. At the time of the killing, Shaver was unarmed as he lay dead in a hotel hallway. Police experts critiqued Brailsford’s tactics to de-escalate the situation. As he entered the scene, he had both hands on his M4 rifle and eliminated all other tools or de-escalation tactics. Brailsford was fired, tried for murder, and then rehired. He ultimately retired due to PTSD. Highlighting the roles of militarization, mental health, qualified immunity, and other policy-related topics, this incident shows why there is a need for national standards for training and de-escalation. Many officers would have approached this situation differently, suggesting there are a myriad of tactics and strategies being taught.

Nationally, officers receive about 50 hours of firearm training during the police academy. They receive less than 10 hours of de-escalation training. So, when they show up at a scene and pull their weapon, whether it be on teenagers walking down the street after playing a basketball game or someone in a hotel or even a car (like in the killing of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb), poor decisions and bad outcomes should not be surprising.

Police officers regardless of whether they live in Kentucky or Arizona need to have similar training. Among the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, there is wide variation in the amount of training that officers have to complete as well as what type of training they complete. With the amount of travel that Americans engage in domestically, law enforcement has not kept up to speed with ensuring that officers receive the same training. Consequently, police officers may be put in positions to make bad decisions because of a lack of the implementation of federal standards. Funding can be provided to have federally certified trainers who work with localities within states, counties, and cities.

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

From 2015–2019, the 20 largest U.S. municipalities spent over $2 billion in civilian payouts for police misconduct. Rather than the police department budget, these funds mostly come from general funds. 15 So, not only is the officer absolved from civil or financial culpability, but the police department often faces little financial liability. Instead, the financial burden falls onto the municipality; thus, taxpayers. This money could be going toward education, work, and infrastructure.

Not only are the financial settlement often expensive, like the $20 million awarded to William Green’s family in Prince George’s County, Maryland, but the associated legal fees and deteriorated community trust are costly. In a place like Chicago, over the past 20 years, it has spent about $700 million on civilian payouts for police misconduct. New York City spent about $300 million in the span of a few years.

We assert that civilian payouts for police misconduct must be restructured. Indemnification will be eliminated, making the officer responsible, and requiring them to purchase professional liability insurance the exact same way that other occupations such as doctors and lawyers do. This would give insurance companies a strong incentive to identify the problem officers early, to raise their rates just the way that insurance companies raise the rates on a bad driver or a doctor who engages in malpractice. In this regard, the cost of the insurance policy would increase the more misconduct an officer engaged in. Eventually, the worst officers would become uninsurable, and therefore unemployable. This would help to increase accountability. Instead of police chiefs having difficulties removing bad officers through pushback from the Fraternal Order of Police Union, bad officers would simply be unemployable by virtue of the fact that they cannot secure professional liability insurance.

Bottom line, police almost never suffer any financial consequences for their own misconduct.

Shifting civilian payouts away from tax money and to police department insurance policies would instantly change the accountability structure.

Shifting civilian payouts away from tax money and to police department insurance policies would instantly change the accountability structure. Police are almost always indemnified for that misconduct when there is a payout. And, what that means is simply that their department or the city, which is to say us, the taxpayers, end up paying those damages claims. That is absolutely the wrong way to do it.

Most proposals for restructuring civilian payouts for police misconduct have included some form of liability insurance for police departments and/or individual officers. This means shifting the burden from taxpayer dollars to police department insurance policies. If a departmental policy, the municipality should pay for that policy, but the money should come from the police department budget. Police department budget increases should take settlement costs into account and now simply allow for increased budgets to cover premium increases. This is a similar approach to healthcare providers working in a hospital. If individual officers have liability insurance, they fall right in line with other occupations that have professional liability insurance.

Congress could approve a pilot program for municipalities to explore the potential impacts of police department insurance policies versus individual officer liability insurance, and even some areas that use both policies simultaneously. Regardless, it is clear that the structure of civilian payouts for police misconduct needs to change. We believe not only will the change provide more funding for education, work, and infrastructure, but it will increase accountability and give police chiefs and municipalities the ability to rid departments of bad apples that dampen an equitable and transparent cultural environment.

Mental Health Counseling

In this broader discussion of policing, missing is not only the voices of law enforcement themselves, but also what is happening in their own minds and in their own bodies. Recent research has highlighted that about 80 percent of officers suffer from chronic stress. They suffer from depression, anxiety. They have relationship problems, and they get angered easily. One out of six report being suicidal. Another one out of six report substance abuse problems. Most sobering, 90 percent of them never seek help. 16 We propose that officers should have mandatory mental health counseling on a quarterly basis. Normalizing mental health counseling will reduce the stigma associated with it.

It is also important for law enforcement to take a serious look into the role of far-right extremism on officer attitudes and behaviors. There is ample evidence from The Department of Homeland Security showing the pervasive ways that far-right extremists target law enforcement. 17 Academic research examining social dominance ideation among police officers may be a key way to root out extremism during background checks and psychological evaluations. Social dominance can be assessed through survey items and decision-making simulations, such as the virtual reality simulations conducted at the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland.

Community Policing

Community police is defined in a multitude of ways. One simple way we think about community policing is whether officers experience the community in everyday life, often when they are not on duty. Do they live in the community, send their children to local schools, exercise at the neighborhood gym, and shop at the main grocery store? Often times, police officers engage in this type of community policing in predominately white and affluent neighborhoods but less in predominately Black or Latino neighborhoods, even when they have higher household income levels. Police officers also live farther away from the areas where they work. While this may be a choice for some, others simply cannot afford to live there, particularly in major cities and more expensive areas of the country. Many police officers are also working massive amounts of over time to make ends meet, provide for their families, and send children to college.

Altogether, community policing requires a set of incentives. We propose increasing the required level of education, which can justify wage increases. This can help to reduce the likelihood of police officers working a lot of hours and making poor decisions because of lack of sleep or stress. We also propose requiring that officers live within or near the municipalities where they work. Living locally can increase police-community relations and improve trust. Officers should receive rent subsidies or down payment assistance to enhance this process.

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Unions are important. However, the Fraternity Order of Police Union has become so deeply embedded in law enforcement that it obstructs the ability for equitable and transparent policing, even when interacting with police chiefs. Police union contracts need to be evaluated to ensure they do not obstruct the ability for officers who engage in misconduct to be held accountable. Making changes to the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights at the state helps with this, but the Congress should provide more regulations to help local municipalities with this process.

Police have to be of the people and for the people. Often times, police officers talk about themselves as if they are detached from the community. Officers often view themselves as warriors at war with the people in the communities they serve. Police officers embody an “us versus them” perspective, rather than viewing themselves to be part of the community. 18

It must be a change to police culture regarding how police officers view themselves and view others. Part of changing culture deals with transforming how productivity and awards are allocated. Police officers overwhelmingly need to make forfeitures in the form of arrests, citations, and tickets to demonstrate leadership and productivity. Police officers rarely get credit for the everyday, mundane things they do to make their communities safe and protect and serve. We believe there must be a fundamental reconceptualization of both the mission of police and the culture in which that mission is carried out. Policing can be about respecting individuals and not using force. It is an ethical approach to policing that requires incentives positive outcomes rather than deficits that rewards citations and force.

T here must be a fundamental reconceptualization of both the mission of police and the culture in which that mission is carried out.

Recommendations for Future Research

First, research needs to examine how community policing and officer wellness programs can simultaneously improve outcomes for the community and law enforcement. The either/or model simply does not work any longer. Instead, research should determine what is best for local communities and improves the health and well-being of law enforcement. Second, future research on policing needs to examine the role that protests against police brutality, particularly related to Black Lives Matter protests, are having on reform at the local, state, and federal levels. It is important for policymakers to readily understand the demands of their constituents and ways to create peace and civility.

Finally, research needs to fully examine legislation to reallocate and shift funding away from and within police department budgets. 19 By taking a market-driven, evidence-based approach to police funding, the same methodology can be used that will lead to different results depending on the municipality. Police department budgets should be fiscally responsible and shift funding to focusing on solving violent crime, while simultaneously reducing use of force on low-income and racial/ethnic minority communities. It is a tall order, but federal funding could be allocated to examine all of these important research endeavors. It is a must if the United States is to stay as a world leader in this space. It is clear our country is falling short at this time.

We have aimed to take a deep dive into large policy changes needed for police reform that centers around accountability, finances, culture, and communities. Though there is much discussion about reallocating police funding, we believe there should be an evidence-based, market-driven approach. While some areas may need to reallocate funding, others may need to shift funding within the department, or even take both approaches. Again, with roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies, there is wide variation in funds provided for policing and how those funds are spent. This is why it is imperative that standards be set at the federal level to help municipalities grapple with this important issue and the others we highlight in this report.

LA Police Commission clarifies: Investigation into former Chief Moore closed without formal conclusion

Two detectives had accused the former chief of ordering an investigation of mayor karen bass over her receipt of a scholarship from usc., by eric leonard • published june 24, 2024 • updated on june 24, 2024 at 3:26 pm.

The investigative arm of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners has clarified that an investigation into a complaint that former LAPD Chief Michel Moore directed an investigation of Mayor Karen Bass over her receipt of a USC scholarship was closed without a formal finding by the Commission because of Moore's early retirement in January.

"This was a recommended finding only, not an adjudication," the Commission's Office of Inspector General emailed the I-Team, after former Commissioner William J. Briggs II said earlier this month that the OIG had cleared Moore of wrongdoing.

📺 Los Angeles news 24/7: Watch NBC4 free wherever you are

‘Not a scintilla' of evidence ex-LAPD Chief ordered investigation of Mayor Karen Bass' USC scholarship

Chief Michel Moore retires after more than four decades with LAPD

"In fact, there's not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that he [Moore] provided any type of order whatsoever," Briggs announced at the Commission's June 11 meeting.

Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning . Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.

The OIG's representative at that meeting, assistant Inspector General Florence Yu, appeared to concur.

"Our investigation, uh, would show that we would recommend an unfounded finding for those allegations," Yu said.

A law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said while Moore's retirement precluded the Commission from making a final adjudication, the inquiry wasn't dropped or closed because of Moore's departure, and said enough information was gathered that supported the conclusion Briggs shared publicly June 11.

Moore has denied he gave an order to investigate the Mayor, and the LAPD said last year the LA Times story that first reported the existence of the complaints, was false.

News Release: Department Statement pic.twitter.com/MfTf3xT4gI — LAPD PIO (@LAPDPIO) December 20, 2023

"I did not initiate, request, or authorize an investigation as alleged in any fashion," Moore said in the statement.

In the complaint filed by 2 internal affairs detectives, reported first in December, 2023 by the LA Times , the detectives said they had received orders through their chain of command, but believed they'd been given by Moore, to open an investigation into the scholarship Karen Bass had received in 2011.

Here with ⁦ @MayorOfLA ⁩ Karen Bass and ⁦ @tavissmiley ⁩ addressing ⁩ global warming. This is about the ugly impact of environmental injustice on communities of color. ⁦ @casciencecenter ⁩ ⁦ @kbla1580 ⁦ @cspan ⁩ ⁦ @SierraClubCA ⁩ ⁦ @CornelWest ⁩ pic.twitter.com/haoMPQmU3j — Mark Ridley-Thomas (@MRTempower) June 19, 2024

That, the complaints said, followed the federal indictment of former LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was later convicted of bribery , conspiracy, and fraud for a scheme with USC to provide a full scholarship for his son in exchange for the award of a County social work contract.

Prominent LA politician Mark Ridley-Thomas sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison

Prosecutors Announce Convictions in Mark Ridley-Thomas Corruption Trial

Ridley-Thomas was sentenced last year to more than 3 years in prison .

He's maintained his innocent and is free on bond while he appeals the conviction.

Bass has denied wrongdoing in accepting the scholarship, which she said was approved by a Congressional ethics panel, and said she did not author any bills while in Congress that benefited USC.

Her office declined to comment on the Moore investigation.

Lawyers for the detectives who filed the complaint were dismissive of the OIG's findings, and said they thought the matter was closed without a thorough investigation.

"It appears that they are protecting his image as opposed to investigating wrongdoing," said attorney Greg Smith.

This article tagged under:

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Int J Circumpolar Health

Alcohol and suicide in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia

Yury a. sumarokov.

1 Department of Community Medicine, UiT-The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

2 International School of Public Health, Northern State Medical University, Arkhangelsk, Russia

Tormod Brenn

Alexander v. kudryavtsev, oleg sidorenkov, odd nilssen.

High suicide rates in the Russian North are coupled with high alcohol consumption in the described populations.

To investigate the potential role of alcohol consumption on suicides in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO) in 2002–2012 and to compare this information with corresponding data from the neighboring Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO).

Retrospective population-based mortality study.

Data from autopsy reports were used to identify 252 cases of suicide in the NAO and 1,198 cases in the AO in the period 2002–2012. Postmortem blood alcohol content (BAC) was available for 228 cases in the NAO and 1,185 cases in the AO. BAC as well as other selected variables were compared between the NAO and the AO among women and men, different age groups, ethnic groups, and selected variables of suicide.

Alcohol was present in the blood of 74.1% of male and 82.9% of female suicide cases in the NAO, which was significantly higher than the proportions found in the AO (59.3% of male and 46.6% female cases). BAC<1.0‰ and between 2.0 and 3.0‰ were more frequently found among suicide cases in the NAO than those in the AO.

Conclusions

Our findings specify that alcohol drinking may be an essential risk factor for suicide in the NAO, and that this factor may be of greater importance in the indigenous population of the NAO than among Russians in the AO.

There is worldwide evidence that people who suffer from depression have a higher prevalence of suicide ( 1 ). Indeed, depression is recognized as the leading independent risk factor for suicide. Other important risk factors are alcohol and drug dependence, chronic diseases, including serious psychiatric disease, negative life events like acute changes in social and human relationships, economic problems, and fear of facing the consequences of one's actions when these actions are seen as shameful or regrettable.

Alcohol dependence and intoxication have been described as independent and powerful risk factors for suicide. Hufford ( 2 ) described the potential relationship between alcohol and suicide in two ways: a distal risk, defined as alcohol dependence over time, and a proximal risk, which is defined as the transformation of the statistical potential for suicide into action. As such, the latter relationship is linked to the timing of suicidal behavior. The mechanisms by which alcohol leads to suicide have been suggested as: (a) an increase in psychological distress, (b) an increase in aggressiveness, (c) driving suicidal ideations to action, and (d) constricted cognition impairing the generation and implementation of alternative coping strategies ( 2 ).

Reported proportions of alcohol use prior to suicide have ranged from 10% in South Africa to 69% in Finland ( 3 ). Studies from Eastern Europe found alcohol in the blood of 47.9% of suicide cases in Estonia ( 4 ), 62% in Belarus ( 5 ), and 60.2% in Russia ( 6 ). Other studies on suicides in Native Americans ( 7 – 10 ), the Sami in Sweden ( 11 ), Indigenous Canadians ( 12 ), and Australian Aborigines ( 13 ) have shown similar findings. Indeed, an overwhelming number of suicides have been reported among native populations in Canada, the USA, Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, Brazil, and Russia ( 14 ). A common finding from all of these studies was the high alcohol consumption in the described populations.

Alcohol was introduced in the indigenous populations during their colonial history. Natively, it has never been a part of their traditional cultures. For example, Russian merchants of 19th–20th centuries played an important role in the drinking habits of the Nenets. The Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO) is located in the Russian North and is home to an indigenous people called the Nenets, who make up 17.8% of the population there. Previous papers have reported that the prevalence of suicides in the NAO is considerably higher than that found in other Russian regions and in Russia as a whole ( 14 ). Regional health workers have suggested that alcohol use may be the main risk factor for high suicide rates.

The aim of this study was to pursue local health workers’ hypothesis and investigate the postmortem presence of alcohol in the blood and the postmortem blood alcohol content (BAC) among suicide cases in the NAO. Furthermore, we compared our findings in the NAO with corresponding findings in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO), which is mostly populated by ethnic Russians.

Materials and methods

Study design.

The present retrospective population-based mortality study included all autopsied suicide cases in the NAO and the AO that occurred from 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2012 ( 14 ). Each case of suicide was selected according to the definition as the act of deliberately killing oneself ( 1 ).

Study site and population

The territory of NAO is situated in Northwest Russia, close to the Arctic Ocean. According to National Census data, in 2010 the total population of the NAO was 42,090 ( 15 ). The main ethnic group in the NAO is indigenous Nenets; non-indigenous groups include the Russians, Komi, and others. The Nenets are one of the largest indigenous population groups in Russia, and they have a large environmental, cultural, and social impact on the region. Many of them still follow the traditional lifestyle of nomadic or semi-nomadic reindeer herders and live in temporary (seasonal) settlements. The AO borders the NAO and covers a large part of Northwest Russia. The AO is one of the most ethnically Russian areas in the world: the proportion of Russians was 95.6% in 2010, compared to a proportion of indigenous Nenets of only 0.6% ( 15 ).

Data sources and description

During the study period, 252 cases of suicide were registered in the NAO (215 males and 37 females). All cases had undergone forensic autopsy and had been classified in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases , 10th Revision (codes X60–X84 and Y87.0). All data from the NAO were collected by the first author (YS). Local health workers contributed to the work, and data from the regional forensic bureau were made available for this work. Twenty-four cases had missing or incomplete data on BAC and were excluded from further analyses. Correctness of the data from the different sources (except for laboratory data) was checked by local experts and re-checked by first author (YS).

During the same period, 1,185 cases of suicide were found in the database of death certificates in the AO. Autopsy records of these cases were reviewed to obtain data on variables that were not present in death certificates. Data in the AO were collected in the regional forensic bureau in Arkhangelsk, and the correctness of the data was checked by local experts and re-checked by one of the co-authors (OS). Thirteen cases had missing values for BAC, and were excluded from the analysis.

Variables of interest for which data were collected for this paper were presence of alcohol in the blood (BAC+), BAC, age, gender, ethnicity, and suicide method. BAC was measured by gas chromatography from blood taken at the autopsies ( 16 ).

Data analyses

Alcohol consumption in the studied areas was estimated as liters of pure alcohol sold per year divided by the number of individuals over 15 years of age in the population ( 17 ). The chi-square test was used to identify non-random differences in the presence of alcohol in the blood and BAC between the studied groups. For small counts Fisher's exact test was used. Microsoft Excel and SPSS 22.0 were used for data storage and analysis.

Ethical considerations

The study was approved on 23 June 2010 by the Ethical Committee of the Northern State Medical University, Arkhangelsk, Russia.

Complete data were available for 228 cases from our NAO dataset. Mean age for males was 36.0 years and 39.1 for females. Mean BAC was 2.02‰ in males and 2.14‰ in females that had alcohol in their blood at the time of autopsy. Complete autopsy data were available for 1,185 suicide cases (977 males and 208 females) from the AO. Mean age was 44.54 for males and 50.21 for females. Mean BAC was 2.54 and 2.56‰ in males and females, respectively.

Presence of alcohol

In the NAO, both genders had a substantially higher proportion of BAC+ suicides than was seen in the AO ( Tables I and andII). II ). Alcohol was present in the blood of 74.1% of male and 82.9% of female suicide cases in the NAO. Among the indigenous population, this proportion was even higher, with 78.3% and 92.3% in males and females, respectively. Data from the AO showed significantly lower proportions of BAC+ suicides, with 59.3% in males ( Table I ) and 46.6% in females ( Table II ).

Table I . Number of suicides and proportion of cases with presence of alcohol in the blood (BAC+) in males by age in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO) and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), 2002–2012

	AO		NAO

Males Age (years)	Number of suicides	BAC+	Number of suicides	BAC+	p
10–19	53	27 (50.9%)	17	13 (76.5%)	0.038
20–29	155	98 (63.2%)	63	47 (74.6%)	0.000
30–39	174	118 (67.8%)	42	32 (76.2%)	0.598
40–49	230	151 (65.6%)	34	27 (79.4%)	0.074
50–59	181	106 (58.6%)	23	19 (82.6%)	0.155
60–69	102	54 (52.9%)	11	5 (45.5%)	0.023
≥70	82	25 (30.5%)	3	0 (0.0%)	0.011
Total	977	579 (59.3%)	193	143 (74.1%)

BAC: blood alcohol content.

Table II . Number of suicides and proportion of cases with presence of alcohol in the blood (BAC+) in females by age in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO) and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), 2002–2012

	AO		NAO

Females Age (years)	Number of suicides	BAC+	Number of suicides	BAC+	p
10–19	8	6 (75.0%)	4	4 (100%)	0.237
20–29	22	12 (54.5%)	6	5 (83.3%)	0.539
30–39	32	21 (65.6%)	12	11 (91.7%)	0.077
40–49	47	29 (61.7%)	8	7 (87.5%)	0.547
50–59	35	15 (42.8%)	2	1 (50.0%)	0.116
60–69	19	7 (36.8%)	0	0	0.351
≥70	45	7 (15.6%)	3	1 (33.3%)	0.681
Total	208	97 (46.6%)	35	29 (82.9%)

When stratified by age and gender, males in the NAO showed a higher percentage of BAC+ suicides than was found in the AO, especially in the age groups 10–19 and 20–29 years, whereas a lower percentage of BAC+ suicides was found in the age group 60–69 years. Higher proportions of BAC+ suicide cases were found among females aged >20 years in the NAO, compared with corresponding figures from the AO ( Table II ), but the difference did not reach statistical significance. Consequently, suicide cases that did not have any alcohol in their blood (BAC-) were more frequently seen in the AO than the NAO ( Table III ).

Table III . Number of suicides by gender and blood alcohol content (BAC) in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO) and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), 2002–2012

	AO		NAO

BAC (‰)	Males	Females	Males	Females	p males	p females
0.0	398 (40.7%)	111 (53.4%)	47 (24.3%)	6 (17.1%)	0.000	0.000
>1.0	96 (9.8%)	12 (5.8%)	32 (16.6%)	6 (17.1%)	0.006	0.017
≥1.0–2.0	123 (12.6%)	21 (10.1%)	33 (17.1%)	4 (11.4%)	0.092	0.766
≥2.0–3.0	173 (17.7%)	34 (16.3%)	50 (25.9%)	17 (48.5%)	0.008	0.000
≥3.0	187 (19.2%)	30 (14.4%)	31 (16.1%)	2 (5.7%)	0.315	0.276
Total	977	208 (100%)	193 (100%)	35 (100%)

Blood alcohol content

BAC+ suicides were categorized into four BAC groups ( Table IV ). Both genders in the NAO more frequently displayed a BAC<1.0‰ or 2.0–3.0‰; p<0.0005). There was an equal number of suicide cases with a BAC>3.0‰ in both the NAO and the AO, and in both in males and females ( Table III ).

Table IV . Distribution of suicide cases with and without alcohol present in the blood (BAC+/BAC−) by suicide method in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO) and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), 2002–2012

	AO (N=1,185)		NAO (N=228)

Suicide method	BAC+	BAC−	BAC+	BAC−	p
Hanging	626 (58.9%)	436 (41.1%)	126 (77.3%)	37 (22.7%)	0.000
Firearm use	19 (61.3%)	12 (38.7%)	34 (79.1%)	9 (20.9%)	0.094
Cutting	9 (29.0%)	22 (71.0%)	7 (46.7%)	8 (53.3%)	0.239
Other	22 (36.1%)	39 (63.9%)	5 (71.4%)	2 (28.6%)	0.104
Total	676 (57.0%)	509 (43.0%)	172 (75.4%)	56 (24.6%)	0.000

Alcohol and suicide methods

When comparing different suicide methods, BAC+ suicide cases commonly used the most violent suicide methods. BAC+ suicides by hanging or firearm use were seen more frequently in the NAO than in the AO (p=0.000) ( Table IV ). BAC+ suicides by hanging and cutting in males were significantly more common in the NAO than in the AO, and BAC+ suicides by hanging in females were also more frequent in the NAO than in the AO ( Table V ).

Table V . Distribution of suicide cases with alcohol present in the blood (BAC+) by gender and suicide method in the Arkhangelsk Oblast (AO) and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), 2002–2012

	AO (N=1185)		NAO (N=228)

Suicide method	Males	Females	Males	Females	Males	Females
Hanging	534/879 (60.8%)	92/183 (50.3%)	102/133 (76.7%)	24/30 (80.0%)	0.000	0.002
Firearm use	19/31 (61.3%)	0/0 (0%)	31/40 (71.5%)	3/3 (100%)	0.137	0.111
Cutting	9/28 (32.1%)	0/3 (0%)	5/13 (38.5%)	2/2 (100%)	0.015	0.052
Other	17/39 (43.0%)	5/22 (22.0%)	5/7 (71.0%)	0/0 (0%)	0.174	0.588
Total	579/977 (59.3%)	97/208 (46.6%)	143/193 (74.1%)	29/35 (82.9%)	0.000	0.000

Other analyses

Analyses of socioeconomic characteristics (employment, education, urban–rural residence, and civil status) of the indigenous and non-indigenous populations of the NAO showed no difference in the proportion of BAC+ suicide cases.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to describe the connection between suicide and alcohol use in two neighboring regions of Russia with ethnically different populations. This paper considers the NAO and the AO as indigenous and non-indigenous areas, respectively, as the NAO comprises one of the largest indigenous populations in Russia, and 99% of the population of the AO is ethnically Russian. It is well known that suicide rates in Russia are among the highest in the world ( 18 ). In addition to South Siberia and the Far East, six Russian regions were mentioned as regions with the highest suicide rates in 2012: Altay, the NAO, Buryatia, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Chukotka, and Tyva ( 19 ). All of these regions contain high proportions of indigenous people, although the NAO has the highest indigenous population.

Access to alcohol

There is less access to alcohol in the NAO compared to the AO. Indeed, as the NAO has no permanent road connection with the rest of Russia, goods like alcohol must be ordered outside the region and then transported by plane, winter roads, or ships during the short summer. Despite this, mass-produced alcohol remains the norm in the NAO. Homemade alcohol, known as “moonshine” or “samogon,” is not common as the ingredients required to make it, such as sugar, are too expensive. Vodka is the most popular type of alcohol in the region, though wine has been gaining favor in recent years. The amount of alcohol sold illegally in the region, be it mass-produced or homemade, remains unknown, but is likely to be high.

Access to alcohol is far less fettered in the AO than in the NAO, as transportation and delivery by road and railway is easy, and distribution by shops is well organized. In the AO, and especially in Arkhangelsk, the drinking culture is like that of other towns in Russia, with bars, pubs, and restaurants that provide alcoholic beverages. However, as in the NAO, the amount of alcohol sold illegally is unknown.

Legislative restrictions for alcohol sales were implemented in Russia in 2011, which prohibited the sale of alcohol between 11:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Each region also has its own restrictions: in the AO, alcohol sales are prohibited between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m., whereas in the NAO sales of hard liquor and wine are prohibited between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 a.m., and beer cannot be sold between 11:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.

Alcohol consumption in Russia is among the highest in the world ( 18 ); consumption is assumed to be higher than figures on alcohol sales indicate ( 6 ) due to consumption of illegally sold liquor, homemade liquor and other illegal spirits. The available figures on alcohol sales in the NAO for 2010–2012 were higher than corresponding figures from the AO: 12.05–13.13 and 10.63–11.04 L of pure alcohol per capita, respectively (Rosstat), which is higher than the national average for the same period ( Fig. 1 ). We therefore assume that that alcohol consumption in the NAO is higher than that in the AO and in Russia.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is IJCH-75-30965-g001.jpg

Official alcohol sales in Arkhangelsk Oblast (left), the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (middle), and Russia (right) in 2010–2012 (in liters of pure alcohol per capita divided by the number of individuals over 15 years of age in the corresponding region).

After comparing data from 27 world nations, Lester concluded that alcohol consumption predicted increased suicide rates ( 20 ). Several studies have tried to confirm the hypothesis of a direct association between alcohol consumption and suicide in Russia ( 21 , 22 ). Nemtsov ( 21 ) showed how a decrease in per capita alcohol consumption in Russia in 1985–1987, followed by an increase after 1987, was reflected in the decline and increase of national suicide rates in the same periods. Other studies have described a strong correlation between suicide rates and alcohol poisoning rates ( 23 ). Razvodovsky reported that an increase in alcohol consumption of 1 L elevated the suicide rates in Russia by 7% in males and by 3.2% in females ( 24 ). There is evidence that only restrictions on the availability of alcohol can decrease suicide mortality ( 4 ).

Suicides and presence of alcohol in the blood

National data from different Russian regions ( 25 ) have shown a higher proportion of BAC+ suicide cases in males (60.2%) than in females (30%). Our findings from the AO demonstrated the same tendency, with 59.3% BAC+ cases in males and 46.6% BAC+ cases in females. Results from the NAO showed a higher proportion of BAC+ suicides in both genders compared with the AO (74.1% in males and 82.9% in females).

There are no national data available on BAC in suicide victims in Russia, but such data have been reported from other countries. Mean BAC in suicide cases among Native Americans was 1.99‰ in males and 1.80‰ in females ( 10 ). Suicide victims in Sweden showed mean BAC of 1.34‰ in males and 1.25‰ in females ( 11 ). Corresponding figures from Brazil were 1.84‰ for females and 1.8‰ for males ( 26 ).

This study supports the hypothesis that alcohol intake prior to suicide is common in Russia ( 23 ) and probably plays an important role in suicide in indigenous territories like the NAO. We found a higher prevalence of BAC+ suicides (both genders) in the NAO than in the AO, and also a higher suicide rate in the NAO than in the AO. This may be seen as the effect of the proximal risk factor (according to Hufford's statement); that is, acute intoxication is an important risk factor for suicidal behavior, as alcohol helps to overcome any inherent resistance to committing suicide ( 2 ).

The mean BAC of suicide cases in the NAO and the AO were slightly different both in males and in females. Time elapsed between death and autopsy could be different in the two study cites, representing a potential bias. However, when we calculated this value, we found little difference (5.3 days in NAO and 4.8 in AO), and after discussion with forensic experts, we concluded that this could not explain the difference in mean BAC. Neither did forensic literature support this hypothesis ( 27 – 29 ).

The most violent suicide methods were hanging in the AO and use of firearms in the NAO. These cases were also most often BAC+. In 1998, Wasserman et al. ( 30 ) reported that female suicide and alcohol consumption in the former USSR, as well as violent death and alcohol consumption, were positively correlated. The same study suggested that alcohol had a lower explanatory value in female suicides and female violent deaths compared with male suicides and male violent deaths, due to the lower attributable fraction of alcohol in suicide cases of females (27%) compared to males (50%) ( 30 ).

Our results from the NAO show that females more often use alcohol prior to committing suicide, likely to better overcome any resistance to the use of violent suicide methods. The literature shows that females more often use non-violent suicide methods like poisoning ( 1 ). Our data from the NAO ( 14 ) showed that 80% of suicides by hanging and 100% of suicides by gunshot in indigenous and non-indigenous females took place after alcohol intoxication. Higher BAC in female suicides than in male cases has also been reported in other studies ( 26 ). A significantly higher proportion of female suicide cases with a BAC>2.0‰ in the NAO compared to the AO also points to the role of alcohol intoxication for female suicide in this mostly indigenous population.

But why does alcohol play such an essential role in suicides in Russia, and especially among indigenous peoples? In Western countries, mental depression seems to be the main risk factor for suicide, and subjects with depression are treated with anti-depressive medicines. For a long time in Russia, it was not deemed necessary to undergo highly-specialized treatment for mental diseases like depression. Thus these cases were underdiagnosed and undertreated, even more so among indigenous subjects. Depression is not something people talk about; it is seen as a weakness that should be concealed. Instead of medical treatment, those who suffer from depression tend to self-medicate with alcohol. That may explain why so few (especially females) individuals in Russia use overdosing with prescribed medications, as is often seen in the West. In addition, medication is expensive and less available than alcohol, thus alcohol use tends to “mask” the need for more medical treatment. Health workers do not seem to pay enough attention to this phenomenon, leaving the population to use whatever remedies are readily available, namely alcohol.

Finally, our results from the AO drew a general picture of alcohol use prior to suicide that is typical in national suicide statistics. In the NAO, alcohol intoxication was more of a proximal risk factor for suicide, which may support the idea that alcohol plays a leading role in the high suicide rates in the NAO. Suicide prevention activities in the NAO should include a global alcohol policy with appropriate restrictions. Males aged 10–29 years should be the main target group for suicide prevention in the NAO.

Limitations

No information on mental disease and depression, history of deliberate self-harm, or suicide attempts was available for the cases of suicide included in the present study. Neither was there any information on history of mental disease, especially depression, among the cases. Altogether 24 cases with missing or incomplete values on BAC in NAO and 13 from AO were excluded from further analyses. This probably did not have any substantial impact on the general picture, and thus likely did not influence our results. These missing data were mainly due to the considerable amount of time that had passed between the date of death and the date the bodies were found and identified, conditions that made an exact determination of BAC almost impossible.

The data sample from the AO was not complete for the entire oblast, as some of the smaller districts have their forensic examinations done at local laboratories. All data from the AO in the study were based on examinations performed at the main regional forensic center in the city of Arkhangelsk. Nevertheless, we do not think that the mentioned conditions impacted our results in any substantial way.

The strength of our study is based on the completeness of information collected by forensic experts in autopsy reports. The same methods and procedures were used to determine and measure BAC in both forensic centers. All data used in the paper were checked and double-checked by health workers at the site and by the authors. The forensic work was very well organized in both the NAO and the AO. Planes and helicopters were used when necessary to transport forensic experts to the sites of suicide investigations. The collection of data for all suicides in both regions, as well as complete autopsy data including BAC, gave us the unique opportunity to compare alcohol in the suicide cases of two neighboring regions in the northwest of Russia, the one populated with almost 100% ethnic Russians (AO), the other with a considerable proportion of indigenous peoples (NAO).

Validity and completeness of data

The police and the Investigation Committee must investigate all suicides in Russia to identify potential criminal cases. A forensic examination immediately follows the primary police investigation. In few cases in males and females, BAC was not analyzed, most often due to a state of extreme decay of the human remains.

Variations in BAC among suicide victims in the NAO and the AO may reflect different relationships between suicide and alcohol in these two regions. Alcohol was more often observed in the blood of suicide cases in the NAO (both genders) than in the neighboring Russian region of AO. This factor may influence the higher suicide rates in the NAO.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Department of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø for financial support of the study. We also thank Andrey Apitsyn, Nikolay Kolebakin, Irina Lyapunova, Sergey Kuzin and other professional experts in NAO and Arkhangelsk for their help in data collection.

Conflict of interest and funding

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests. The study has not received any financial support from industry and business.

IMAGES

🌈 Corruption in law enforcement essay. Police Corruption In Law
Essay on Corruption: 150-250 words, 500-1000 words for Students
(PDF) Police Corruption and the State: Prevalence and Consequences
⇉Police Corruption and Police Deviant Behavior in America Essay Example
Police Corruption: A Crime With Severe Consequences
ESSAY

VIDEO

POLICE
Corruption essay in English| Anti corruption day| essay on corruption|
Breaking News!
Corruption in English || Corruption English Essay || Corruption Essay Writing ||
Corruption Essay With Quotations In English || Smart Syllabus Essay
Pune Porsche Accident |Essay writing |funny comedy shorts

COMMENTS

Conclusion about Police Corruption: [Essay Example], 415 words
In conclusion, police corruption is a serious and multifaceted issue that requires a comprehensive and proactive response. By understanding the various factors that contribute to corruption and its impact on the community, law enforcement agencies and policymakers can work towards implementing effective strategies for preventing and addressing ...
Police Corruption Essays
Police corruption and misconduct affects all of us because it is a major problem in the police department. Majority of the time police misconduct goes unnoticed because police officers keep their business private from society.
Essay on Police Corruption
Essay on Police Corruption. The primary objectives of police are to honor and safeguard property and life, protect the rights and freedoms of every person in the jurisdiction of the state, and maintain security and peace. To attain the goals, the police must interact with the observers and society to accomplish law as stated by the constitution ...
Corruption in Law Enforcement Research Paper
The law protects citizens from police brutality but the issue of corruption and misconduct still exist in society.
Police Brutality: Exploring Arguments and Solutions
The issue of police brutality is a complex and multifaceted problem that requires careful consideration and action. While there are valid arguments on both sides of the debate, it is clear that there is a need for greater accountability and transparency within law enforcement. By implementing solutions such as cameras and de-escalation training ...
Essay On Police Corruption
Police corruption is an occurrence that is in many ways too multifaceted to simply try and comprehend its intricate nature. It is defined as the violation of state and federal laws or the violation of an individuals ' constitutional rights by police officers; also when police commit crimes for personal gain. Policing has changed since the very ...
Police Brutality: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions
Police brutality is a concerning issue that needs immediate attention due to its impact on individuals and society. This essay will explore the definition and forms of police brutality, the causes of this phenomenon, its consequences, and potential solutions to address it.
The Police Culture and Corruption
This sparked heated debate among the general public, decision-makers, and academics. Goal misalignment between the community and police occurred as a result of militarized police starting to view themselves as armies battling on the front lines of war instead as public servants. Get a custom essay on The Police Culture and Corruption.
Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality
Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong Essay. Nowadays, hardly anyone has any illusions concerning police and how police officers perform their duties. Certainly, police do provide the citizens with decent protection, offering enough security, investigating crimes, and even preventing ones.
Police Corruption Essays: Examples, Topics, & Outlines
View our collection of police corruption essays. Find inspiration for topics, titles, outlines, & craft impactful police corruption papers. Read our police corruption papers today!
PDF What Do We Know about Police Corruption?
The most reliable and extensive knowledge about police corruption in the world's English-speaking countries is found in the reports of specially appointed blue-ribbon commissions, independent of government, created for the sole purpose of conducting investigations of police corruption.
Police ethics and integrity: Keeping the 'blue code' of silence
His main conclusions were that public inquiries into police scandals are important and corruption is hard to tackle but can be significantly reduced with the right strategies.
8 Conclusions and Implications for Policy and Research
Read chapter 8 Conclusions and Implications for Policy and Research: Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime,...
Police Corruption Essays
Writing an essay on police corruption is a complex task that requires careful research, critical analysis, and a nuanced approach. It involves navigating ethical, legal, and sociopolitical issues while considering different perspectives objectively. Thorough research of both historical and current cases is needed to understand the systemic factors that contribute to corruption and potential ...
Essay Summary of Police Corruption (500 Words)
Essay on Essay Summary of Police Corruption Police corruption is the misuse of police authority for personal gain. Examples include extortion (for example, demanding money for not writing traffic
Police Violence and Corruption in the Philippines: Violent Exchange and
Furthermore, we argue that we cannot dissociate the killings from the rampant corruption in the Philippine police. By invoking the concept of violent exchange, the article shows that both corruption and death enter into particular understandings of state-citizen relationships.
Police Corruption Policing
Police corruption is one form of unethical behaviour that is due to the authority and power placed and trusted upon the police officer. Power corrupts, and so with this perceptive view, police corruption comes in many stages of development. Get Help With Your Essay.
Discussion and Conclusion
Abstract. Incidents of police deviance, albeit rare, have tarnished the reputation and image of many police officials and departments across the United States. By distinctly clarifying the categories of police deviance and identifying the most obvious underlying criminological explanations for these unacceptable actions, police administrators ...
A better path forward for criminal justice: Police reform
The deaths of unarmed Black Americans at the hands of police are leading to calls for sweeping police reform. In this chapter of "A Better Path Toward Criminal Justice," experts lay out a ...
Investigation of former LA Police Chief closed without formal
LA Police Commission clarifies: Investigation into former Chief Moore closed without formal conclusion Two detectives had accused the former chief of ordering an investigation of Mayor Karen Bass ...
Arkhangelsk
Arkhangelsk (UK: / ˌɑːrkæŋˈɡɛlsk, ɑːrˈkæŋɡɛlsk /, US: / ɑːrˈkɑːnɡɛlsk /; [ 14 ] Russian: Арха́нгельск, IPA: [ɐrˈxanɡʲɪlʲsk]), occasionally referred to in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia.
Alcohol and suicide in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Arkhangelsk
The police and the Investigation Committee must investigate all suicides in Russia to identify potential criminal cases. A forensic examination immediately follows the primary police investigation. In few cases in males and females, BAC was not analyzed, most often due to a state of extreme decay of the human remains. Go to: Conclusion
In Arkhangelsk Oblast, law enforcement officers searched the apartment
Law enforcement officers came to the apartment of the mother of activist Andrei Borovikov in the village of Obozersky of Arkhangelsk Oblast with a search, seized nothing and took her away for questioning. The search was conducted on the case of FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation). Borovikov himself confirmed to "7x7" the information about the search on 24 October. .
Alcohol and suicide in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Arkhangelsk
The police and the Investigation Committee must investigate all suicides in Russia to identify potential criminal cases. A forensic examination immediately follows the primary police investigation. In few cases in males and females, BAC was not analyzed, most often due to a state of extreme decay of the human remains. Conclusion

Essay on Police Corruption

Effects of police corruption on individual rights and due process

Effects of police corruption on public order and crime control

Controlling police corruption

Cite This Work

Related Essays

Police Brutality: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Table of contents

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Police Brutality

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

Police Corruption, Misconduct and Brutality: When a Good-Cop-Bad-Cop Routine Goes Wrong Essay

Reference List

Proactive Policing: Effects on Crime and Communities (2018)

LAW AND LEGALITY

CRIME AND DISORDER

Place-Based Strategies

Problem-Solving Strategies

Person-Focused Strategies

Community-Based Strategies

COMMUNITY IMPACTS

Place-Based, Problem-Solving, and Person-Focused Interventions

Community-Based Interventions

RACIAL BIAS AND DISPARITIES

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

RESEARCH GAPS

Improving the Quality of Data and Research on Proactive Policing

Proactive Policing and the Law

Crime-Control Impacts of Proactive Policing

Community Impacts of Proactive Policing

Racial Bias and Disparities in Proactive Policing

THE FUTURE OF PROACTIVE POLICING

Welcome to OpenBook!

Get Email Updates

Discussion and Conclusion

Cite this chapter

Access this chapter

Bibliography

Author information

Rights and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Download citation

Share this chapter

A better path forward for criminal justice: Police reform

Subscribe to Governance Weekly

Level Setting

Reform Qualified Immunity

Restructure Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct

Restructure Regulations for Fraternal Order of Police Contracts

National Standards for Training and De-escalation

MEDIUM-TERM REFORMS

LONG-TERM REFORMS

Recommendations for Future Research

RECOMMENDED READING

LA Police Commission clarifies: Investigation into former Chief Moore closed without formal conclusion

‘Not a scintilla' of evidence ex-LAPD Chief ordered investigation of Mayor Karen Bass' USC scholarship

Chief Michel Moore retires after more than four decades with LAPD

Prominent LA politician Mark Ridley-Thomas sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison

Prosecutors Announce Convictions in Mark Ridley-Thomas Corruption Trial

This article tagged under:

Alcohol and suicide in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia

Tormod Brenn

Conclusions

Materials and methods

Study site and population

Data sources and description

Data analyses

Ethical considerations

Presence of alcohol

Blood alcohol content

Alcohol and suicide methods

Other analyses

Access to alcohol

Suicides and presence of alcohol in the blood

Limitations

Validity and completeness of data