Council on Criminal Justice. Task Force on Policing: Policy Assessments

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"In partnership with the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, the Task Force is conducting more than two dozen assessments of proposed policing reforms. Each policy assessment provides an overview of the state and extent of the evidence on each topic and the expected impact of each reform on public safety, misuse of force, police-community relations, racial disparities, and officer safety.

Task Force members are examining measures focused on preventing excessive use of force, reducing racial biases, increasing accountability, and improving the relationship between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve."

Police Visibility, Trust in Police Fairness, and Collective Efficacy: A Multilevel Structural Equation Model

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"Areas high in collective efficacy—where residents know and trust one another, and are willing to intervene to solve neighbourhood problems—tend to experience less crime. Policing is thought to be one antecedent to collective efficacy, but little empirical research has explored this question. Using three waves of survey data collected from London residents over three consecutive years, and multilevel Structural Equation Modelling, this study tested the impact of police visibility and police-community engagement on collective efficacy. We explored direct effects as well as indirect effects through trust in police. The findings showed both levels of police visibility and police-community engagement predicted trust in police. Trust in police fairness, in turn, predicted collective efficacy. There was a small indirect relationship between police visibility and collective efficacy, through trust in police fairness. In other words, police presence in neighbourhoods was associated with more positive views about officer behaviour, which in turn was associated with collective efficacy. The findings have important implications for policies designed to build stronger, more resilient communities."

Police Programmes that Seek to Increase Community Connectedness for Reducing Violent Extremism Behaviour, Attitudes and Beliefs

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"Community connectedness and efforts to engage communities may help to mitigate the risk of individuals radicalizing to violent extremism. Police, under some circumstances, can play a key role in programmes aimed at tackling violent extremism. This includes working with communities and other agencies to tackle social isolation, economic opportunity, and norms and beliefs that lead individuals and groups to radicalize and support extremist causes.

This review looked at whether or not strategies involving police in the initiation, development or implementation of programmes aimed at community connectedness had an impact on reducing violent extremist beliefs and behaviours."

Who Should Keep the Public Safe?

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"Protests over police brutality that started in May continue to make headlines as protestors continue to make the case for defunding or abolition. Do the police still have a role to play in keeping the public safe? To discuss this, The Agenda welcomes former RCMP officer Chad Haggerty; London police chief Stephen Williams; Fareeda Adam, staff lawyer at Black Legal Action Centre; and Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor, Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto."

Recognition Gaps and Economies of Worth in Police Encounters

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"This paper examines what arrested individuals expect from the police, and the moral grammars they rely on to evaluate police behavior. Drawing on interviews with recently arrested suspects in the Cleveland city jail, we analyze the moral grammars, or common worlds that residents invoke to reflect on interactions with law enforcement. We find that respondents care about two different moral dimensions in policing. At one level, they want police to treat them with civility and politeness, and to respect their rights - thereby treating them equally with other residents in the city. Yet at a second level, they want police to show care and empathy for their local situation. and to recognize that policing the neighborhoods in which they live is different than policing other parts of the city. As a result, we find that residents who are arrested by the police deploy two orders of worth: a civic order, grounded in fairness, legal rules, equality, and civic belonging to the polity; and a domestic order, based on a politics of community and difference, emphasizing empathy, local knowledge, and personal experience. We demonstrate how individuals assess and test the moral promise of institutions to offer moral recognition, redress, and repair."