Building bridges in police-youth relations through experiential peacebuilding: how reduced threat and increased humanization impact racialized structural and direct violence in Baltimore

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the United States, trust in law enforcement is plummeting alongside increased crime rates and police-involved killings, primarily of unarmed black men, making this social issue of imminent importance. Moreover, globally, security actor reform and relationship-building between communities and security forces is essential to post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention. This research examines Outward Bound’s Police Youth Challenge (PYC) program with officers and youth in Baltimore to assess the long-term impact of encounter-based peace education programs that use experiential peacebuilding to bridge divides between youth and security actors. To achieve this goal, interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted with youth, officers, and key informants, and we conducted analysis of secondary data collected by Outward Bound and external evaluators. We found that PYC reduced intergroup anxiety and threat through building trust and facilitating mutual humanization between the youth and officers, which countered officers’ meta-dehumanization. However, challenges arose in participants generalizing these attitudes to the broader population outside of the contact situation. Consequently, we recommend follow-on activities to sustain transformations and promote their generalization to other out-group members. These findings suggest the importance of utilizing experiential peacebuilding to improve attitudes and relationships between security actors and the local populations they police.