FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN POLICING: THE EVIDENCE by National Research Council of the National Academies

Author:National Research Council of the National Academies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Behavioral and Social Sciences : Law and Justice
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Published: 2004-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

Citizen involvement in complaint review is thought to have a number of salutary effects. It may improve the perceived receptivity of the complaint review system to complaints; the perceived efficacy of the complaint review system; the rate at which perceived misconduct is reported to authorities; the depth and thoroughness of complaint investigations; the satisfaction of complainants with their experiences with the complaint review system; the procedural fairness of complaint review, as it is judged by complainants; and police performance in interactions with citizens. Complaint review is therefore about much more than the accurate and fair disposition of individual allegations of police misconduct.

Little empirical evidence has been produced about the extent to which citizen review meets these expectations. Some evidence suggests that most citizens who believe that they have reason to complain do not complain. Walker and Graham (1998) analyzed data collected through a survey of 12,000 respondents in 3 metropolitan areas encompassing 24 jurisdictions in 1977. About 6 percent said that they had a reason to complain about an aspect of police service in the preceding 12 months, and of those, 36 percent had complained (half of those had reportedly called the police department). But the study could not examine whether the reporting rate was higher in jurisdictions that provided for greater citizen involvement in complaint review. The popularity of citizen review and optimism about its benefits far outstrip the empirical evidence that citizen review has salutary effects.

The committee recommends that a program of rigorous evaluation research consider a wide variety of citizen review boards, assessing their impact on a range of police practices (but especially those features that are frequent targets of citizens’ complaints), controlling for the influence of other institutions that might also be responsible for overseeing police integrity (e.g., the police organization itself and the courts). A comprehensive evaluation would go beyond examining the effect of civilian review on complaints filed but would consider other data sources, such as citizen surveys of high-risk populations (e.g., arrestees and those interrogated during field stops) and direct field observation.

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