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Police Reform Efforts to Combat Misconduct

Police Reform Efforts to Combat Misconduct . Historical analysis indicates past reforms have too narrowly focused on individuals. 3 Broad categories of reform: Administrative Judicial Legislative. Administrative Reform--Police Professionalization.

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Police Reform Efforts to Combat Misconduct

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  1. Police Reform Efforts to Combat Misconduct Historical analysis indicates past reforms have too narrowly focused on individuals. 3 Broad categories of reform: Administrative Judicial Legislative

  2. Administrative Reform--Police Professionalization Benefits: rational deployment, improved services, higher personnel standards, better training, and an overall separation from political influence that plagued earlier PDs Drawbacks: researchers noted that race riots occurred in cities that had very professional PDs. If this is true, then where is the failure? Early admin provided no discussion of discretion or what officers actually do on the street.

  3. Administrative Reform Specific failures: • lack of principles for patrol management • lack of standards for street supervision • lack of meaningful evaluation systems • failure to respond to high cost of civil litigation • failure to discipline officers found guilty of misconduct • Demonstrates that some PDs failed to live up to their own standards Solution?

  4. Judicial Reform 3 Strategies: (1) Constitutional: Supreme Court decisions Cannot ensure day-to-day compliance with its own decisions; many problems never reach the level of constitutional violations (2) Civil litigation Relies on assumption that officials will act in a rational/coordinated manner to address problems (3) Criminal prosecution Successful prosecution is difficult

  5. Legislative Reform (1) Blue-ribbon commissions Lack the ability to implement their own recommendations to ensure reform occurs. (2) Permanent external oversight (civilian review boards) Have suffered due to lack of: power, cooperation, resources, or interest. Does not result in higher levels of sustained citizen complaints Focuses too much on individual officers

  6. Lessons Learned To be effective, reform efforts must: Change day-to-day practices of line officers Use supervisors to control critical actions of line officers Have some overarching strategy, and not be piecemeal Employ mechanisms/procedures to be sustained over time

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