Special issue on police reform

Police reform in post-conflict societies is increasingly important in international peace support operations. Post-conflict situations are complex, and addressing security and insecurity issues is therefore challenging. Evaluations, field reports and research have frequently highlighted challenges related to how assistance is provided in connection with police reform. A common finding in these evaluations is that police reform programmes without local ownership and community involvement and support have little chance of succeeding. Community-oriented policing (COP) has therefore become an important policing philosophy and strategy in this context. This paper addresses issues related to the challenges in implementation of police reform by exploring the perennial question of how police assistance can be better utilised in a sustainable manner in post-conflict contexts. The paper is divided in two sections. In the first, we identify some key challenges facing international police assistance. Here we discuss six main challenges grounded in secondary literature comprising academic research and police mission reports. In the next section using the example of a broadly based police experts network (PEN) established in connection with the EU-funded research project ‘Community-Based Policing and Post-Conflict Police Reform’, the paper discusses how such a network can play an important role in contributing to policy formation, education and training programme development for use in police reform projects. The creation of the e-handbook and e-learning shows the potential for such a network to work and contribute in a cross-disciplinary manner. Furthermore, we identify four key ways in which this type of network can contribute to improved international police assistance. The work is exploratory and contributes to understanding of the complexities of police assistance in post-conflict contexts.

Police reform in post-conflict societies is increasingly important in international peace support operations. Post-conflict situations are complex, and addressing security and insecurity issues is therefore challenging. Evaluations, field reports and research have frequently highlighted challenges related to how assistance is provided in connection with police reform. A common finding in these evaluations is that police reform programmes without local ownership and community involvement and support have little chance of succeeding. Community-oriented policing (COP) has therefore become an important policing philosophy and strategy in this context. This paper addresses issues related to the challenges in implementation of police reform by exploring the perennial question of how police assistance can be better utilised in a sustainable manner in post-conflict contexts. The paper is divided in two sections. In the first, we identify some key challenges facing international police assistance. Here we discuss six main challenges grounded in secondary literature comprising academic research and police mission reports. In the next section using the example of a broadly based police experts network (PEN) established in connection with the EU-funded research project ‘Community-Based Policing and Post-Conflict Police Reform’, the paper discusses how such a network can play an important role in contributing to policy formation, education and training programme development for use in police reform projects. The creation of the e-handbook and e-learning shows the potential for such a network to work and contribute in a cross-disciplinary manner. Furthermore, we identify four key ways in which this type of network can contribute to improved international police assistance. The work is exploratory and contributes to understanding of the complexities of police assistance in post-conflict contexts.

As Michael Kempa acknowledges, The industrialised West has for a long time, been hyperactive in policing reform in ‘societies in transition’ (2010: 272) via a plethora of schemes and initiatives. Citing figures from Bayley (2005) he highlights that considered globally around $200 billion is spent annually on policing, and of this one-third is directed to developing ‘democratic’ policing in transitional and conflicted states (Bayley, cited in Kempa 2010: 273). In many respects police and security sector reform has become a global industry where the lines between state and corporate interests have become increasingly muddied. In addition, the police reform landscape is dotted with any number of policy entrepreneurs — often retired police officers, or representatives of small aid agencies — who criss-cross the world’s trouble-spots promoting particular models of policing. As we discuss shortly, the favoured reform template is invariably community policing since this is intertwined with all sorts of assumptions about the nature of democratic policing (Brogden and Nijhar 2005). Increasingly, however, concerns about global terrorism and drugs have meant that key Western states intervene in the security sector of those states deemed to be ‘at risk’ or to pose a risk in some way. This can be done directly, as with FBI and CIA input into specific aspects of police reform in Turkey and Brazil (case studies) and the sponsoring of sympathetic local elites (Iraq/Afghanistan and historically Turkey) or indirectly through ‘tied’ and coercive aid/assistance transfers. In this way policing reform becomes one of the tools used for upholding political economy in recipient nations, rather than something that can truly transform policing democratically.

Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) police/rule of law missions in the Western Balkans are increasingly guided by externally imposed normative agendas that respond primarily to EU internal security needs rather than functional imperatives or local realities. In line with these needs, EU police reform efforts tend to prioritise effectiveness and crime fighting over longer- term democratic policing and good governance reforms. In practice this means that police reform initiatives are technocratically oriented, yet value ridden fitting EU security concerns and needs. As a result, the police reform process can be—and often is—disconnected from the political and socio-economic reforms necessary for long-term stability and sustainable peace. Police assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been shaped by a determined albeit questionable focus on organised crime and corruption. The focus of EU police reform in Macedonia on primarily crime-fighting aspects of policing has compromised thefunctioning of the Macedonian police. Similarly, the politics of (non-)recognition of Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence and the intrusiveness of EULEX Kosovo's executive mandate contravene meeting local challenges.

In this chapter we discuss neoliberal globalization and its implications for relations among states, crime and insecurity, policing and police reform. An authoritative definition of globalization is elusive in the literature because ‘as a concept, globalisation, like the idea of God, is known to us all, even if we do not all believe in or understand it’ (Kinley 2009: 15). Many scholars define globalization largely in economic terms (for example, see Brady et al 2007), but there is also a significant body of literature that focuses on broader issues, including politics, science, and culture in addition to economics, and as we demonstrate below this understanding has more relevance when it comes to discussing the globalization of crime control and security. Globalization involves greater interdependence among political, economic, and social institutions, and this interdependence expands and intensifies social relations to the point that local occurrences can be influenced and shaped by other events taking place a great distance away (Cerny et al 2005; Giddens 1990; Guillen 2001). Thus, Held and McGrew (2003: 1) provide a more inclusive definition of globalization: Globalisation, simply put, denotes the expanding scale, growing magnitude, speeding up and deepening impact of transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction. It refers to a shift or transformation in the scale of human organisation that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across the world’s regions and continents.

Northern Ireland currently occupies a hugely prominent position globally in respect of police reform debates. Although the historical ‘lessons’ from Northern Ireland were invariably negative (Mulcahy 2005), the ambitious police reform programme outlined in the 1999 Patten Report, and which formed a key pillar of the peace process, has moved Northern Ireland centre-stage as a ‘model’ for debates about police reform generally. This chapter outlines historical and contemporary developments in relation to policing in Northern Ireland. First, I consider the historical context of policing during the Troubles, particularly in terms of the role of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and its relationship with the public. I then examine the issue of police reform during the peace process, discussing in detail the recommendations of the 1999 Patten Report. The third section assesses the implementation of the reform programme, the emergence of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), and the impact of this on police oversight and operational policing. The chapter concludes by considering the implications of these developments for wider debates on policing and police reform.

One of the largest donor-funded projects since 1994 concerning reform of South African policing is described in this paper. The project, Assistance to Policing in the Eastern Cape, targeted policing work in a province acknowledged to rank lowest in the country on numerous human development indicators. The paper outlines the various components of the project, sketches the overall implementation of its objectives, and attempts to arrive at a provisional assessment of the project's impact in an environment inhospitable for administrative efficiency. It concludes with a brief review of developments at the end of the project cycle.

As an integral part of the 1992 Peace Accords for ending conflict in El Salvador, radical reform of the civilian policing has virtually involved the creation of a new, non‐political police force. In spite of resistance to reform, including attempts by the armed forces to retain a public security role, the achievements have been impressive in terms of replacing former security bodies, generating public confidence, greater respect for human rights and improved training. This has been possible because of the political recognition in El Salvador of the essential need for reform and because the Peace Accords provided clear guidelines and a timetable for change. The UN and the international community have also played a key role in assisting the transition, particularly in establishing a training academy, providing technical assistance and verifying the implementation of the Accords. However, the El Salvador experience also offers lessons, including the need for political leadership by the UN in integrating and ...

Police reform as institutional change: Symbols and dilemmas

Since 2014, China's Ministry of Public Security has begun to reform the national police system, which involves internal command, criminal intelligence and welfare support systems. This research aims to explore how policing reform affects the daily law enforcement of frontline police officers and grassroot police units, and the views of frontline police officers on policing reform. The study also analyses the changes in the organisational structure of grassroot police units and the criminal intelligence system after the policing reform. The research methodology consisted of the researchers conducting a textual analysis of work reports issued by multiple local police units and reform reports in newspapers, and investigating the views of frontline police officers on policing reform. The study found that the reform did help enhance the law enforcement capabilities of grassroot police units and frontline police officers. Most frontline police officers additionally supported the policing reform. However, the policing reform has also led to issues such as the indiscriminate expansion of police power and the work pressure on frontline police officers. Finally, this study is an exploratory observation of China's national police system and can provide new insights into research on policing and the understanding of Chinese policing practices. It can additionally provide different countries with new information about policing reform.

In recent years, the topic of police reform has become commonplace, especially regarding the use of force. However, little is known about the process of reforming police policies and practices. Further, the current literature provides hardly any information on the challenges associated with police reform despite heightened interests more recently to address various shortcomings in law enforcement. The current analysis seeks to fill this gap by providing a first-hand account of efforts by police reform commission immediately following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. As such, this manuscript details the process of establishing a commission to put forth recommendations, describes notable obstacles to accomplishing its mission, and highlights various perspectives and their influence on the entire process. Additionally, this manuscript offers insight regarding the successful implementation of recommendations resulting from such efforts towards police reform. Finally, this note offers suggestions for both future research and ways to enhance the success of similar committees based on these experiences. Calls for reform are all too common in the aftermath of police misconduct. Nonetheless, the means by which police reform occurs is less often publicized, perhaps resulting in numerous variations nationwide when such committees are called upon. The goals of this manuscript are to propose a model for police reform, highlight notable experiences observed while participating, and suggest caveats and shortcomings which might be useful to future attempts to organize similar committees. Finally, this essay provides insight into the success of efforts toward police reform and the obstacles associated with implementing recommendations after public interest subsides

Since independence, police reforms have been influenced by the need to expand democratic space and to ensure protection of human rights. Previous studies have attempted to deconstruct the police reforms. However, the studies have not adequately examined the implications of police reforms on human rights in Kenya. This paper examines police reforms between in Kenya between 1978 and 2002 and their implications on human rights. The study was based on a descriptive survey design and targeted senior serving and retired police officers, government administrators, county government administrators and members of the human rights groups in Nairobi County. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 116 study participants. Data was collected through focus group discussion, interview schedule and document analysis and analyzed based on thematic content analysis. The study findings revealed that Moi’s presidency (between 1978 and 2002) was marked by minimal police reforms but heightened human rights violation including arrests without warrants, detention without trial and torture which resulted in injury and death. This implied that in the absence of substantive reforms, the police disregarded human rights. Hence, the period between 1978 and 2002 was marked by curtailed freedom of association, assembly, speech and expression. Keywords : Human Rights, Police Reforms, human rights discourse, Moi era, Kenya DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/103-06 Publication date: November 30 th 2020

Over the course of the past half century, policing in the United States has gone from an institution in deep crisis and a flashpoint in the country’s culture wars to a widely admired example of innovative, bipartisan reform—and then back again. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, police forces were overwhelmingly white, male, and politically reactionary. Liberals saw the police as racist, violent, and ineffective and blamed them, with justification, for the hundreds of riots that convulsed American cities under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. At the same time, conservatives rallied around the police as symbols of “law and order”—the cause that, more than any other, won Nixon the White House in 1968.1 By the late 1990s, however, the police had become far more diverse and far less insular, and new approaches to law enforcement, especially “community policing” and “problem-oriented policing,” had won remarkably broad respect across lines of race, class, and ideology.2 Enthusiasts of “new governance” regularly pointed to police departments as models of the kind of pragmatic reform other public sectors could profitably emulate.3 The pitched battles over the police in the Johnson and Nixon years, the jeering of officers as “pigs,” and the strident calls to “support your local police” felt increasingly remote.Then all the progress seemed to disappear. President Donald Trump resurrected “law and order” as a partisan rallying cry, championed the most violent and aggressive forms of policing, and allied himself with officers more loudly and divisively than Nixon ever had. In the summer of 2020, when tens of millions of protesters marched across the United States and riots broke out in a series of cities, the motivating grievances were about the police, and especially about the large number of young Black men killed by law enforcement officers. For many on the left, reforming the police no longer seemed possible; they wanted to abolish the police or least to slash their budgets.4 Americans on the right, meanwhile, increasingly saw attacks on law enforcement as attacks on them and on their idea of what the country should be.5 The calls in 2020 to “defund the police” were blamed, in 2021, for rising homicide rates across the United States, for spates of robberies and car thefts in some cities, and—by moderate Democrats—for off-year electoral losses to Republicans.6 Law enforcement is again a political battleground, not just dividing Democrats from Republicans but pitting progressives against moderates, young against old, and marginalized community against marginalized community.7 Once again, the police are in crisis, and once again they seem part of the reason the country is in crisis. The recent history of policing is a tale of reversals and upended expectations.In other ways, as well, the enterprise of policing is marked by contradictions. This is especially true of the deep and complicated connections between policing and equality. Public law enforcement agencies are inherently redistributionist, socializing the use of force, but ever since the birth of modern policing in London in the late nineteenth century, officers have protected the privileged against the “dangerous classes,” and American policing in particular has long and continuing connections with racial subordination. People of color in the United States are more likely than whites to be victims of crime and more likely to be victims of police violence and abuse; they suffer from both police nonfeasance and police malfeasance. Inadequate protection against crime is among the most damaging forms of racial inequality in the United States, but so is the appallingly large number of young people of color, particularly African Americans, killed every year by the police.Charting a new course for public safety thus means confronting paradoxes and trade-offs. It requires accepting necessary compromises while rejecting those that have been tolerated for lack of imagination. It also means confronting two different social divides. The first is the ideological divide, the growing chasm between left and right that today, as half a century ago, has made policing a partisan flashpoint. The second divide is sociological: the gulf separating privileged Americans from the poor people and people of color who disproportionately bear the burdens of both crime and abusive forms of policing. Each of these two divides has implications for police reform. The ideological divide places a premium on proposals that can gain broad, cross-partisan support. The sociological divide provides reason to give special weight to the interests and views of poor people and people of color, especially African Americans.8Although police reform was never as successful as it was said to be in the 1980s and 1990s, neither was it a dead end. There are ways to make policing fairer, more effective, less abusive, and less lethal by building on successes of past reforms while addressing their very real shortcomings. Fortunately, moreover, the proposals most likely to work are supported by Americans on both sides of the ideological divide and by a majority of the groups most affected by crime and by abusive policing.How can American policing be transformed into a more effective and egalitarian system of public safety? We need to start with four key facts. First, crime has devastating, disproportionate impacts on poor people and people of color, especially Black Americans. Second, police violence and other forms of abusive law enforcement also take a tragic and outsize toll on poor people and people of color, and here, too, Black Americans are particularly likely to be victimized. Third, improved policing has helped make crime far less common today than thirty or forty years ago, but some of the progress has been lost in recent years. Fourth, there have been successes over the past several decades in reforming police departments, but the victories have been partial and very often fleeting.Fear of crime is often whipped up for partisan purposes, but the damage that crime inflicts on victims, as well as on their families and communities, is real and massive. Criminal victimization is also regressive, falling most heavily on those who are already disadvantaged. All of this is particularly true of the most extreme forms of violence—homicide, aggravated assault, and rape—which can fairly be called epidemic in the United States and which victimize African Americans, along with their families and neighborhoods, at greatly elevated rates.There are between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand homicides annually in the United States—a rate of about five or six per one hundred thousand people in the country. Among Black Americans, though, the rate is much higher. African Americans die violently at seven times the rate of whites; for men the ratio is nine to one. Homicide is the third-leading cause of death among Americans aged fifteen to thirty-four; it is the leading cause of death among Black males under forty-five and the second-leading cause of death among Latino males under forty-five. Young Black men are fifteen times more likely than their white counterparts to be the victims of homicide. Violence is responsible for more lost years of Black male lives than cancer, stroke, and diabetes combined. Meanwhile more than a million Americans are hospitalized each year from attacks that do not turn out to be fatal, and African Americans are more likely than whites to be the victims of these attacks, too. Black people are also disproportionately represented among the several hundred thousand victims of rape each year in the United States.9The failure to protect African Americans and other marginalized populations from crime is among the starkest and most damaging forms of racial inequality in the United States. No other wealthy country tolerates such extreme racial disparities in the risks of violent victimization.10Moreover, beyond the lives that it cuts short, homicide and other forms of extreme violence can have tragic consequences for the families of victims and for the neighborhoods where it occurs. High rates of violence make fear a constant presence in people’s lives, affecting the material conditions of their daily existence in countless ways. It turns heat waves more deadly, for example, by making people afraid to leave their homes. Children living in neighborhoods with high rates of violence perform worse in school, reinforcing the cycle of disadvantage that keep families locked in intergenerational poverty. This is not just a matter of correlation: Black schoolchildren do dramatically worse on standardized tests in the days immediately after a local homicide than in the days just before. Exposure to lethal violence makes it hard for them to concentrate, and the effects appear to accumulate with each additional killing. Crime, especially homicide and other serious forms of violence, also depress property values, helping to maintain the gaping disparities between the household wealth of Americans of different races and robbing local governments of tax revenues, which in turn makes it harder for them to confront not only violence but virtually every other challenge they face. For communities as well as for individuals, exposure to criminal victimization, and in particular to homicide and serious assault, is a pillar of American inequality.11Much of the explanation for the racial disparities in rates of criminal victimization in the United States lies outside the criminal justice system: in the pervasive, interlocking disadvantages imposed on people of color, especially on African Americans. Discrimination perpetuates poverty, and poverty breeds crime, making potential offenders more desperate and potential victims more vulnerable.12 But part of the explanation is inadequate policing, and more precisely the long history of police departments protecting white, wealthy neighborhoods more than poor neighborhoods disproportionately populated by people of color.13If poor people and people of color in the United States have long suffered from inadequate protection against crime, they have also suffered from an excess of violence and abuse at the hands of the police. Police officers kill roughly a thousand Americans every year. Somewhere between half and eighty percent of the deaths, probably, are unjustified.14 And the victims of police killings are disproportionately people of color, with young Black people men especially at risk. Black Americans are fourteen percent of the population but more than a quarter of the people shot dead by the police.15 From 1980 through 2019, on an age-adjusted basis, Black people were more than three times as likely to be killed by the police as whites; Latinos were close to twice as likely.16 Between 2015 and 2019, an unarmed Black man was four times as likely to be fatally shot by the police as an unarmed white man.17 For Black and white males between the ages of twenty and twenty-four, the ratio was five to one.18Deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers are the most extreme way, but far from the only way, in which the burdens of policing fall disproportionately on African Americans and other people of color. People of color, especially young Black men, are more likely to be stopped by the police. When they are stopped, they are less likely to be treated with respect, more likely to grabbed or struck, more likely to be searched, and more likely to be arrested.19The harsh, often brutal treatment of African Americans and other people of color by police has ramifications far beyond the deaths, physical injuries, and indignities it inflicts. Stops and arrests are entry points into the carceral system. Excessively aggressive, discriminatory policing helps to sustain jail and prison populations that are bloated and racially lopsided. And the interactions that people have with the police reverberate through their communities, with lasting effects not just on attitudes toward law enforcement but on broader ideas about law, government, and society.20 Unsurprisingly, African Americans consistently report less confidence in the police than whites.21 But mistreatment by the police often leads, also, to an enervating sense of disempowerment—a sense of physical vulnerability, lack of belonging, and alienation—not just in the immediate victim of the mistreatment but in friends, family, and neighbors as well.22The damage that American policing does to people of color and their communities has received more attention over the past three decades for several reasons. Part of the explanation is changes in law enforcement: the expansion of police forces since the 1980s; more aggressive use of stop-and-frisk; crackdowns on low-level, quality-of-life offenses; and the spread of militarized equipment and tactics, including through the proliferation and increased use of SWAT teams.23 Increased public awareness of police violence has also played a role; the key contributors here have been the Black Lives Matter movement and the advent of smartphones and social media.24 But some part of the reason that police violence and its disproportionate use against people of color has loomed larger may also be a success to which law enforcement agencies themselves contributed: the dramatic, transformational decline of crime in the 1990s. As threats of private violence became less omnipresent in poor neighborhoods of color, threats of police violence—which had always been there, in the background—became more jarringly inexcusable.25As devastating a toll as crime now takes in the United States, it did far more damage thirty years ago. Between the early 1990s and the turn of the millennium, the national homicide rate dropped by roughly forty percent, and the decline was even larger in the neighborhoods and demographic groups hardest hit by crime. The rates of other crimes saw similar drops.26 The sociologist Patrick Sharkey notes that for Black men, the homicide drop was the largest public health achievement of the past several decades, shrinking the racial disparity in life expectancy and preserving roughly one thousand years of life for every one hundred thousand Black men. Sharkey has also documented the ways in which the decline of crime changed the fabric of life in poor neighborhoods, allowing public spaces to be reclaimed and alleviating the constant, debilitating fear of violent attack. Combined with changes in law enforcement, the crime decline of the 1990s altered the nature of the physical insecurity experienced in poor communities of color, particularly by young people, “from the threat of violent peers to the threat of abusive police.”27The plummeting crime rates of the 1990s were followed by more modest reductions in homicides and aggravated assaults in the early years of the twenty-first century. Homicide rates began to rise, though, around 2014, and then surged in cities across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021.28 Some major American cities recorded more homicides in 2021 than in any prior year.29 And just as the crime decline in the 1990s was particularly pronounced in poor neighborhoods and predominantly Black neighborhoods, fatal shootings have risen most dramatically in recent years in those same neighborhoods.30 In Los Angeles, for example, Black Americans are nine percent of the population but constituted thirty-six percent of homicide victims in 2021; in New York City, the figures are twenty-four percent and sixty-five percent, respectively.31 Rates of other violent crimes do not appear to have risen as much as homicides, and the nationwide homicide rate in 2020 and 2021 remained well below its peak in the 1980s. Still, a significant amount of the progress made in reducing fatal attacks in the 1990s and early 2000s seems to have slipped away, at least temporarily and possibly for longer. Just as there was nothing unavoidable about the high crime rates of the 1980s, there is no guarantee those rates will not return.The causes of the crime drop in the 1990s are still debated, and so are the explanations for the rising homicide rates of the past several years. Some of the credit for the crime drop, though, almost certainly should go to improvements in policing: either to the expansion of police forces in the 1990s, or to changes in how the police operated, or most likely to both factors. The evidence is threefold. First, a growing body of research links increased police presence to decreases in crime, especially homicides. Some of this research examines the effects of changes in the size of local police forces; others look at the effects of temporary surges in police presence because of, for example, terrorist alerts.32 Second, the crime drop during the 1990s was roughly twice as large in New York City as elsewhere in the country, and the most plausible explanation for the difference is the especially large changes in the quantity of and quality of policing in New York City during that period.33 Third, there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of particular police strategies that became more widespread in the 1990s, especially tactics that focus on areas where a large number of crimes take place and other examples of “problem-oriented policing.”34American law enforcement didn’t just get better at controlling crime in the last decades of the twentieth century. It also improved in other ways, albeit unevenly, and too often transiently. At the beginning of the 1970s, for example, police departments in the United States were overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. Many departments, particularly in big cities, grew more diverse in the 1980s and 1990s, often through hiring plans adopted in response to lawsuits. By the early 2000s, some large police forces were majority minority—this was true, for example, in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.—and the percentage of female officers had grown as well. Smaller departments made less progress, though. Moreover, as court-ordered hiring plans have expired over the past twenty years, diversification has stalled even in larger departments, and some past gains have been undone.35Diversifying law enforcement agencies is not a panacea—there are no panaceas in police reform—but accumulating research suggests that minority and female officers are less likely to use unjustified force, especially against people of color.36 White male officers partnered with minority or female officers also change their patterns of policing for the better. And diverse departments are less insular, more open to outside ideas, and better connected to the communities they serve, all of which makes them more likely to adopt other reforms.37One particular way in which police diversity has facilitated other reforms is by countering the strident hostility of police unions toward efforts to reduce police violence, increase police and racial in law Police unions are not always of but even today they do more to than to for making law enforcement fairer, more effective, and less reason for that is that the of police unions and than police officers of Black and Latino officers have often championed reforms by police and the presence of officers of color may in some have police unions to moderate their most of those reforms over the past half century have been community policing and policing, both of which spread widely in the 1980s and 1990s, as and just as every police in the country to “community policing,” in part because it became a for At its though, community policing was more than a It was a of law enforcement from a and toward a that on and with the public and with other policing had major some of which will be And because community policing was with of it was hard to It though, because it often greatly increased public with the police and made people fear of crime to real reductions in when people felt they out and and to become with more people most community policing also police departments, and it focus beyond crime allowing them to a of other by the communities they It well with policing, which called on officers to work and on an basis, with other agencies and the public to of particular local but not policing to responsible for a disproportionate amount of but not the were officers. community policing, the focus on to and a body of evidence these with significant crime there are that and other forms of policing have helped some cities the national and reduce homicides in community policing and policing also increased attention to low-level, of such as and the Part of the idea was that when these of were left neighborhoods toward people on the and rates of serious this was the of Police on quality-of-life could be too, and the that these were in effective at reducing serious crime, but not as dramatically as policing and only when the community and particular in particular crackdowns on quality-of-life as community policing and policing, did not reduce the other of the from quality-of-life policing, policing the of in which the police with community groups and other agencies to particular groups of people responsible for a disproportionate of a first and most of which was in the 1980s and called because their most was often threats of consequences at the and groups violence in a particular But the also of social to the same people, and more recent of this more than policing. is growing that these when right, their moreover, community policing and policing their in poor were and not just because they were of from of officers in neighborhoods hit hardest by crime. policing and policing police to adopt what the had called the of law kind of policing in to from the of law enforcement in had called the which and the which when community policing and policing were to against life they on the In community policing and policing officers to for neighborhoods to a of other than law enforcement: and so that they had not up to be social but it out they often were at other agencies to more attention to marginalized several different community policing and policing have lost much of their over the past two The terrorist attacks of to calls for more aggressive forms of law enforcement, and and local in the early 2000s many departments to community policing and policing as forms of these the crackdowns on and in New York City, helped to community against them in many against the of police And it became increasingly that, even at their community policing and policing had some was that these attention to police This was not in the of either of could have with the public and agencies outside law enforcement to reduce police But they Police the of police violence, especially police because they did not the of the This was because the victims were of marginalized groups and or because did not still does on police killings or other forms of police violence, and the advent of body and of these were to It those and the Black Lives Matter movement to give the of police killings the attention it had long lethal police violence against Black Americans and Latinos has over the past half century. for the of the victims, the of killed by a police in the United States during the 1980s, and the drop was particularly Black Americans and The decline in police killings over the course of that to have been to new the use of lethal against In the three decades, in the age-adjusted rate of police killings of Black Americans and Latinos remained roughly constant while the rate for white Americans as a the age-adjusted for Americans also In some though, rates to From through 2019, police killings in areas and but by thirty percent in the thirty largest American cities, because of new on use of violence in some cities has dropped especially In Los Angeles, for example, significant of by the police appear to have been in half between and 2019, and police shootings appear to have by forty by officers increased in 2021 but remained far than in past In on the other of by the police have dropped by percent over the past fifteen years, but the rate of police shootings has not a similar Police shootings in between and in and again in and and then dropped over the several years, by to roughly the Los and have been of efforts at police reform over the past two decades, so the of by police in these cities over the past are in some reductions in of in both cities and significant reductions in police shootings in Los but in others progress on police shootings in also the in patterns of police violence, as in crime across the United States. The Police by the and the number of of per thousand arrests for hundreds of American police departments from to the from fifteen to the United States as a had New York rate of police almost Americans have been killed by the police in had New York homicide people have violently that same Police can and have but the victories have been and often

This article presents new data on provisions for police reform in peace agreements (PRPA) between 1975 and 2011. The PRPA dataset complements past research on the determinants and effects of specific terms in agreements with detailed data on police reform provisions. The PRPA dataset also adds a quantitative dimension to the thus far largely qualitative literature on post-conflict security sector reform (SSR). It includes information on six subtypes of police reform: capacity, training, human rights standards, accountability, force composition and international training and monitoring. We show that there is currently a high global demand for the regulation of police reform through peace agreements: police reform provisions are now more regularly included in agreements than settlement terms that call for power-sharing or elections. We observe interesting variations in the inclusion of police reform provisions in relation to past human rights violations, regime type, or the scope of international peacekeeping prior to negotiations, and illustrate the implications of police reform provisions for the duration of post-conflict peace. Finally, we stimulate ideas on how scholars and policymakers can use the PRPA dataset in future to study new questions on post-conflict police reform.

Contents: Prospects for Democratic Policing: Introduction, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski Assessing the obstacles, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski Policing and police reform in the US: adequate for export?, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski The principles of democratic policing, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski Implementing democratic policing and related initiatives, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski. Country Case Studies: Introduction, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski Policing and institution building in Iraq, Rehan Mullick and Rabia Nusrat Crime, power, and policing in South Africa: beyond protected privilege and privileged protection, Robert Shanafelt Human rights and democratic police reform in Northern Ireland, Steven T. Engel Creating police partnerships with civil society in Kazakhstan through US-funded domestic violence training: a step toward democratic policing, Edward Snajdr The role of the police in promoting the rule of law, Heath Grant, Jane Grabias and Roy Godson. Conclusion: Conclusion, Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski Bibliography Index.