Police Reform Research Articles

Changes in China’s Policing: Organizational Structure and Daily Law Enforcement of Frontline Police

Abstract 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.

A Call for Change: The Social Construction of crime, accountability, and police reform.

Crime in the media is often shaped by social constructionism, which is a theoretical framework that our perceptions of reality are shaped by the social and cultural contexts in which we live. Claim makers utilize concepts of social constructionism to support a narrative of an issue that is out of control and to ignite action on the part of the citizens and the government to save and restore faith in humanity. This paper deconstructs a crime committed to show the concepts used to make this social construction a reality and help society adapt and want to change the future of policing. This crime was linked to prior cases of abuse of power and racially motivated attacks by police officers that support the enactment of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Social construction has a greater chance of being accepted by society when there are reputable individuals who support the claim, the claim is easy to understand, individuals can visualize themselves in the situation, the claim incites some form of fear or other emotion, and the claim is repeatedly proven to be true when comparing with other cases of the same nature. The proposed solution to the social construction is that police reform is vital to reduce racial prejudice and ensure that police are accountable for their misconduct.

Community-Based Crisis Services, Specialized Crisis Facilities, and Partnerships With Law Enforcement.

How a community responds to behavioral health emergencies is both a public health issue and a social justice issue. Individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis often receive inadequate care in emergency departments, boarding for hours or days while awaiting treatment. Such crises also account for a quarter of police shootings and 2 million jail bookings per year, and racism and implicit bias magnify these problems for people of color. Fortunately, the new 988 mental health emergency number compounded with police reform movements have created momentum for building behavioral health crisis response systems that deliver comparable quality and consistency of care as we expect for medical emergencies. This paper provides an overview of the rapidly evolving landscape of crisis services. The authors discuss the role of law enforcement and various approaches to lessening the impact on individuals experiencing behavioral health emergencies, especially for historically marginalized populations. The authors provide an overview of the crisis continuum, including crisis hotlines, mobile teams, observation units, crisis residential programs, and peer wraparound services that can help ensure that linkage to aftercare is successful. The authors also highlight opportunities for psychiatric leadership, advocacy, and strategies for creating a well-coordinated crisis system that meets the needs of the community.

Did California Act to Save Lives? AB 392 and fatal officer-involved shootings

Abstract American police face considerable criticism from the public about the perceived unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force in civilian interactions. Police reform advocates often call for widespread change to reduce officer-involved shootings and other forms of deadly force. Some, such as California, pursued statewide legal interventions to limit police deadly force. AB 392, the California Act to Save Lives, changed the deadly force standard so that objectively reasonable officers, when considering the totality of circumstances, can only use deadly force when necessary to defend human life. The stricter standard was designed to limit officer deadly force and reduce civilian deaths so this paper considers the efficacy of AB 392 on the incidence of fatal force in California. The results of interrupted time series and synthetic control method (SCM) analyses find no evidence of a reduction in deadly force after the passage of AB 392. Any effort to change deadly force should be coupled with legislative changes and evidence-based practices. Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers will need to explore a multi-pronged approach to reduce deadly force encounters.

Police Reform Suggestions

Police Reform Suggestions

Police Retention: A Systematic Review of the Research

Abstract Difficulties in recruitment and retention undermine the ability of U.S. police departments to maintain and diversify their workforces, particularly in light changing workloads and performance expectations. The police reform movement and recent increases in crime have highlighted these challenges, but other systemic and acute issues have also made staffing departments difficult. Attention to police staffing has been sporadic and uneven, with much discussion focused on recruitment. Given increasing attrition and that retention is more efficient than recruitment, there is considerable need for systematic examination of staff turnover and the development of strategies to bolster retention. To help fill this need, this manuscript assesses the landscape of retention research. We began by conducting a systematic search of four scholarly databases, which yielded 82 journal articles for investigation. We developed a codebook to isolate research features, which we captured in an SPSS dataset. We analyzed article content to illustrate key characteristics and lessons, including the types and characteristics of scholars and organizations who have produced the research, financial support for research, the characteristics of journals in which the work is published, substantive foci (including on diversity), methodological approaches and types of data, units of analysis, theoretical explanations and the causes and correlates of attrition, effects of turnover, and forms and effectiveness of retention strategies. We illustrate the nature and evolution of this work, identifying key features, strengths, weaknesses, lessons, and gaps in knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for police research and evidence-based workforce planning.

Implications of Police Reforms on Human Rights Practice During the Democratic Transition in Kenya, 2003-2009

Globally reforms in the security sector have been influenced by the need to safeguard human rights. This paper examines the nexus between police reforms and human rights practice in Kenya during the democratic transition in Kenya (2003-2009). The paper argues that while there have been numerous police reforms, the police institution has continued to engage in acts of human rights violation in complete disregard of international human rights provisions. The findings revealed that during the democratic transition between 2003 and 2009 reforms in the police institution were enacted to protect human rights. However, impunity, resource scarcity and lack of political goodwill continuous to slow down security sector reform progress. Keywords: Police reforms, democratic and constitutional transition, human rights practice DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/128-04 Publication date: January 31 st 2023

경찰에 대한 절차적 통제방안 연구

With the inauguration of the Yoon Seok-ryul government, discussions on police reform are hot. The core of this can be seen as the establishment of a so-called “police station” within the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and the reason why the establishment of a police station became a key task in the Yoon Seok-ryul government is that control of the police has been raised as police investigation rights have expanded. Accordingly, Minister of Public Administration and Security Lee Sang-min launched the Police System Improvement Advisory Committee (hereinafter abbreviated as the Advisory Committee), established a police station in the Ministry of Public Administration and Security according to the advisory committee’s recommendation, and the police station was launched on August 2, 2022. Regarding the launch of the police station, there is constant controversy over whether “security” is the secretary of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and Article 34 (5) of the Government Organization Act stipulates security affairs as the National Police Agency, but it is not separately stipulated in the duties of the Minister of Public Administration and Security.
 However, through the revision of the Criminal Procedure Act and the Prosecutor’s Office Act in 2020, the prosecution’s command of investigation was abolished, and the scope of direct investigation was limited to six crimes, and reduced to two crimes (0.4%) through the revision in 2022. According to this, the judicial police have the right to initiate and proceed with the investigation of 99.6% cases and terminate the investigation, so a new interpretation of the police’s investigation work is needed. As a result, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Public Administration and Security were forced to review the final attribution of the police investigation, and eventually appeared as a consultative office for the enactment of the Presidential Decree, which stipulates the investigation rules under Article 196 (2) of the Criminal Procedure Act. This is because Article 66 (Presidential Status/Responsibility) (4) stipulates that “administrative power belongs to the government” and Article 88 (Power/Composition of the State Council) (1) stipulates that “the State Council deliberates on important policies under the authority of the government”.
 However, no matter what judicial system is followed, the criminal justice system is directly related to the rights and interests of the people in the process of realizing the national criminal right, and it is difficult to correct it if it is incompletely designed due to the nature of the system. The problem is that although the Criminal Procedure Act was revised in the name of judicial reform, much of the case was granted to judicial police officers, ignoring the reality of Korea being investigated by judicial police officers, which is a modified structure different from the continental and Anglo-American judicial systems.
 In the end, it is necessary to revise the Criminal Procedure Act with the police and the prosecutor’s system, and if necessary, reform should be carried out in a way that restores the prosecution’s (quasi) judicial character through the separation of the prosecutor’s (direct) investigation and the prosecution’s an investigative command.

‘Help is on the way’

Abstract In the UK, police reforms to meet needs of a diverse society have been limited in the case of deaf signers to an increase in sign language interpreting services (SLIS). This article explores the consequences of this dependence on SLIS by the UK police. We consider how deaf signers’ contact with the police may be inaccessible, despite national frameworks that ‘guarantee’ accessibility through the provision of BSL-English interpreting. We draw on qualitative data from focus groups and interviews with police officers and custody sergeants who describe their experiences of having contact with deaf signers (or other minority language users) through interpreters. We examine and contrast their perceptions and experiences concerning if, when, and how SLIS provided access, as well as its impact on their contact with deaf signers. We compare these findings with UK police reform policies to identify the current state of these provisions along with potential divergences.

Police unions and use‐of‐force reforms in American cities

AbstractFollowing the murder of George Floyd, there was widespread debate about the policies that govern the use of force by police, but municipal leaders suggested that police unions kept many of the proposed changes from being adopted. Although there is anecdotal and scholarly evidence that unions frequently oppose policing reform, the limited literature in this area actually offers somewhat mixed conclusions about the relationship between union strength and the success of previous reform efforts. In this study, we draw on Halpin's theory of interest groups as politically adaptive organizations to develop expectations about the behavior of police unions in police governance subsystems. We hypothesize that union attempts to influence policy will correlate positively with reform adoption when the political environment is conducive to victory on that front or makes the cost of opposition too high and negatively when the opposite conditions hold. Analyses of the impact of union campaign contributions on the adoption of use‐of‐force policies in the 100 largest U.S. cities demonstrate that the nature and direction of union influence are moderated by the political climate of the jurisdiction in which they operate.

The Rocky Road of Serbia to the European Union’s Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice

Abstract The article assesses the Serbian Government’s progress in policy areas of the European Union Negotiating Framework for the accession under Chapter 24 – Justice, Freedom, and Security, like migration, asylum, police, customs and judicial cooperation, and the fight against organized crime, terrorism, and drugs. It builds on a research synthesis of monitoring results from 2013 to 2021 by prEUgovor – a coalition of seven civil society organizations with extensive expertise in examining accession negotiation policies. The research findings show that Government’s performance is advanced in policy areas where the European Union’s insistence and political calculation of national policy-makers exist to benefit domestic and international politics. Serbia performs migration and asylum reforms better than policing and fighting organized crime. Police reform is essential for Chapter 24 but is not targeted at the crucial European Union call asking police to be held accountable and immune from organized crime and political influence.

Looking into the History of Recent Police Reforms in the USA: Critical Insights, Learning and Implications

Abstract The police force in the United States of America (USA) has been controversial for their execution of force and actions. This paper reviews the historical account of police reforms in the USA. The review illustrates various issues and dynamics of five significant eras of police reforms – the political era, the reform era, the community policing era, the homeland security era, and the current context. The review generates several vital insights. The concurrent socio-political factors highly influenced the police reforms initiatives. The paradigm shifts of policing towards militarization transformed the psychology of policing towards the use of excessive force. Police brutality has become part of the policing norm, and racial biases continues to shape the reform ideas. Emerging evidence shows that community policing has failed to deliver its intended outcomes, and the homeland security efforts are complicated by various local and global political factors. The evaluation of the current context informs that racial discrimination, lack of community engagement, austerity in funding, inadequate data, and excessive militarization of the police force will shape the future course of the reforms. Future interventions must be informed by adequate research and coherent ideas. This review provides policymakers and practitioners with insights into the complexity of police reforms. Abstrak Kepolisian di Amerika Serikat (AS) telah menjadi kontroversial untuk pelaksanaan kekuatan dan tindakan mereka. Makalah ini mengulas catatan sejarah reformasi kepolisian di Amerika Serikat. Tinjauan tersebut menggambarkan berbagai isu dan dinamika lima era reformasi kepolisian yang signifikan – era politik, era reformasi, era pemolisian masyarakat, era keamanan dalam negeri, dan konteks saat ini. Tinjauan ini menghasilkan beberapa wawasan penting. Faktor sosial politik yang bersamaan sangat mempengaruhi inisiatif reformasi kepolisian. Pergeseran paradigma kepolisian ke arah militerisasi mengubah psikologi kepolisian ke arah penggunaan kekuatan yang berlebihan. Kebrutalan polisi telah menjadi bagian dari norma kepolisian, dan bias rasial terus membentuk gagasan reformasi. Bukti yang muncul menunjukkan bahwa perpolisian masyarakat telah gagal memberikan hasil yang diharapkan, dan upaya keamanan dalam negeri diperumit oleh berbagai faktor politik lokal dan global. Evaluasi konteks saat ini menginformasikan bahwa diskriminasi rasial, kurangnya keterlibatan masyarakat, penghematan dana, data yang tidak memadai, dan militerisasi kepolisian yang berlebihan akan membentuk arah reformasi di masa depan. Intervensi masa depan harus diinformasikan oleh penelitian yang memadai dan ide-ide yang koheren. Tinjauan ini memberikan para pembuat kebijakan dan praktisi wawasan tentang kompleksitas reformasi kepolisian.

The emergence and spread of the summons in lieu of arrest, 1907–1980

Over the past several years, police reformers in the United States have tried to develop alternatives to arrest and encourage police to use them more widely, but this work has moved forward with little awareness of similar efforts in the past. This paper provides an overview of one important strand of that history. Drawing on original archival research, it reconstructs the origins of the summons in lieu of arrest in early-20th century New York, and it chronicles the subsequent spread and transformation of this new form of police authority throughout the country. I argue that this story challenges the dominant understanding of the character of 20th century police reform. Where most historians have argued that early 20th century reforms aimed to focus police attention more narrowly on crime control, the police summons arose as an important tool to accommodate the broad array of tasks that American society increasingly expected the police to handle. Where most historians have argued that Progressive-era police reform was driven by an emerging corps of national policing experts who aimed to brush away the dysfunctional practices of the past, the development of the summons emerged from an intensely local process of experimentation that tried to understand and build on the foundation of existing practices. In these respects, the development and spread of the summons provides a distinctive image of the forms that police reform has taken in the past, as well as the forms it might potentially take in the future.

July 22nd a window of opportunity for police reform?

AbstractThis article deals with questions concerning the relationship between the Norwegian police reform of 2016 and the terrorist attack at Utøya in 2011. The 2016 reform is often presented as an automatic response to the attack by media, politicians and the Police Director. As something that had to be done. A reform that had been in the cupboard for more than a decade since the previous reform of 2000 and was simply dusted off and presented as a neat and fresh general solution to many different problems facing the police. The article argues that the terror attack on July 22nd and the subsequent July 22nd Report (The Gjørv Report, NOU 2012:14) presented “a window of opportunity”or police management to make changes not only in the organization of the police, but also in regard to basic ideals of policing. These are changes that would have raised political resistance under normal circumstances. Furthermore, they had little connection to the basic problems of the force as identified in the July 22nd Report and in the debate concerning the police response after the attack.

Framing Injustice: Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS) in Nigeria and the #EndSARS Protest Response from a Social Movement Theory Perspective

This article employs Social Movement Theory (SMT) to examine collective action mobilisation against malfeasance by Nigeria’s Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS). Created in the 1990s to counter armed gangs, SARS gradually became discredited. Finally, in October 2020, after weeks of public protest, the unit was disbanded. The #EndSARS movement proved instrumental here. The present article explores the origins, nature and decline of SARS until the #EndSARS protests. #EndSARS arguably provoked police reform in Nigeria. Furthermore, whereas social media has dominated the discourse on the protesters’ agency, I employ framing theory, as a SMT sub-set, to show that #EndSARS employed diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames, within “injustice” master frames, towards collective action mobilisation. In conducting this analysis, I situate the #EndSARS case within the broader literature debate on impactful protests against police brutality.

Putting A Fresh Face Forward: Does the Gender of a Police Chief Affect Public Perceptions?

As the public, policymakers, and scholars increasingly call for police reform, one commonly proposed solution is to increase the number of female officers and leaders under the assumption that female police will be perceived as more trustworthy, less violent, and more effective at addressing gendered crimes. Using a survey experiment, we explore whether there is a link between passive representation in police leadership and civilians’ perceptions of substantive representation by the police. We argue that due to feminine stereotypes and role congruity theory, female police chiefs should be perceived as more effective at addressing gendered crimes, corruption, police brutality, and community relations, but be evaluated as less competent on addressing violent crimes. We find that female police chiefs are considered to be more competent at handling gendered crimes (with little relationship with non-gendered crimes), and are viewed as more able to address corruption, police brutality, and community relations. Female police chiefs are also more likely to receive higher levels of overall support. We emphasize that our study points to the importance of passive representation within police leadership, but caution that increasing women’s representation may be a necessary, but not sufficient condition to improve relations between the public and the police.

Owning Police Reform: The Path Forward for Practitioners and Researchers

Owning Police Reform: The Path Forward for Practitioners and Researchers

To Protect and Serve? Race and Police Use of Force across Religious Contexts

Background While prior research has revealed a dynamic relationship between individual religiosity and punitiveness, much less is known about how religious context might affect attitudes toward punitiveness. In addition, even less is known about how religion, individual or contextual, might shape public attitudes toward an important aspect of punitiveness—police use of force, an issue that has evoked large-scale social movements in recent years. Purpose The present research aims to fill in the gap from prior research by examining the relationship between religious context and attitudes toward police use of force. Particularly, this study intends to investigate whether said relationship varies by race. Methods In this study, individual-level data from the General Social Survey (GSS) 2000–2018 were merged with contextual-level data from the U.S. Census 2000 and the Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS) 2000 enabling a multilevel analysis of the religious effects on attitudes toward police use of force. Results Study results suggest that higher county-level Catholic population share was associated with less support for police use of force. In contrast, when county-level evangelical Protestant population share rose, residents, including Blacks, became more supportive of police use of force. However, the evangelical Protestant contextual effect was stronger for Whites than Blacks, and this White-Black difference grew when county-level evangelical Protestant population share increased. Conclusions and Implications The findings suggest that religious effects on attitudes toward punitiveness are multilevel. Religious context exerts independent and divergent influences on one's perceptions of police use of force above and beyond important individual characteristics. Therefore, religious contextual characteristics may need to be considered in the ongoing debate on police brutality and reform.

“Companionship and a Little Fun”: Investigating Working Women’s Leisure Aboard a Hudson River Steamboat, July 1919

This article provides an in-depth consideration of a single report penned on the night of July 27, 1919 by a private detective employed by New York City's Committee of Fourteen (1905–1932), an influential anti-vice and police reform organization. A close reading of the undercover sleuth's account, which details his experiences, subjective judgments, and general observations regarding moral and social conditions while aboard the Benjamin B. Odell, a palatial Hudson River steamboat, enables us to enrich our grasp of the courtship and pleasure-seeking practices popular among working women and men active in New York City's heterosocial and largely segregated amusement landscape during the so-called 'Red Summer.' Specifically, the report reveals how wage-earning women articulated femininity and sought individual freedoms, companionship, pleasure, and romance via Hudson River steamboat excursions. The relatively unsupervised atmosphere of such trips was appealing to some working women because it represented an affordable way to attain companionship, prohibited forms of amusement and entertainment, and sexual gratification, a way that sidestepped many of the reputational hazards typically associated with the search for such goods among mainland leisure spaces. Such opportunities were particularly valuable given the crackdowns on public sexuality and late-night amusement spaces that had followed America's entry into World War I in 1917 and the advent of 'wartime prohibition' on July 1, 1919. The article also supplies important contextual information required for proper appreciation of the investigation report in question, including a discussion of the methods and goals of the Committee of Fourteen and a brief overview of prior efforts by Progressive Era urban moral authorities to uncover and control 'white slavery,' gambling, and other 'vices' witnessed aboard steamboat excursions operating in and around New York, Chicago, and other coastal cities.

Work engagement, burnout, and the motivation to serve among law enforcement officers during the COVID-19 pandemic and community protests in the USA

Abstract In recent years, law enforcement officers in the USA have faced substantial new demands due to the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide community protests for racial justice and police reform. To understand the impacts of these new demands, this study investigates changes in officer work engagement and burnout over time and the role of public service motivation (PSM) in sustaining high work engagement and attenuating burnout. Using survey data collected in 2019 and 2021 from all officers working in a state-level police organization in the Midwest region of the USA, we find not only that officer work engagement has decreased and burnout has increased but also that PSM is an important predictor of officer work engagement. Contrary to our expectation, we also observe a positive relationship between PSM and burnout among frontline officers in 2019 and no evidence of a relationship in 2021. These findings confirm the adverse impacts of COVID-19 and community unrest on officer work engagement and burnout and suggest that PSM generally enhances officer work engagement but under certain conditions may also increase officer burnout.