Newswise — When police officers impose their authority or use force, who holds them accountable and how? And have structural changes to police departments, municipalities, and counties changed, or even confused, the standards that police are measured against? How do external forces, such as local politics, influence police accountability standards?
The criminal justice experts contributing to Holding Police Accountable, published today by the Urban Institute Press, say that police accountability research needs to be revived to get answers to these and related questions. The book itself is the opening salvo.
“The primary purpose of the police is to protect life. All policy follows from that.” These words from James Fyfe, the preeminent scholarly and practical voice of police use of force scholarship from the 1970s through the mid-2000s, inspired nine top researchers to look anew at police accountability and take a crucial step toward redefining research in the field.
Within the pages of Holding Police Accountable,
● Jerry Travis (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) reviews the past accomplishments of police accountability research and explains why it is just as necessary today.
● Samuel Walker (University of Nebraska at Omaha) illustrates how the development of research, policy initiatives, and administrative controls can significantly influence justice officials’ discretionary decisions.
● Lorie A. Fridell (Florida State University) tracks 40 years of policymaking related to police use of deadly force and explains how policy shifts changed law enforcement practices.
●William Terrill (Michigan State University) discusses nonlethal force policies, the difficulty of determining appropriate force across different standards, and policy implications.
● Michael D. White and Justin Ready (Arizona State University) examine three studies of the New York Police Department’s use of TASERs to describe when the weapon is typically used, assess TASER effectiveness predictors, and compare news accounts of TASER use with related police reports.
● David Klinger (The Police Foundation) assesses a successful experiment to reduce the amount of force police officers use in their daily encounters with citizens. The study randomly assigned officers to an innovative training program and compared their performance with that of officers who received no training. The upshot? Training makes a significant difference and so does the type of training.
● Candace McCoy (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) compares lawsuits brought against police departments before the 1978 Monell v. Department of Social Services Supreme Court decision to cases filed after the landmark decision. McCoy concludes that both lawsuits and investigations conducted by the insurance industry improved and standardized police policies and procedures.
● Bryan Vila (Washington State University at Spokane) analyzes the impact of fatigue on police decision-making and concludes that work-induced exhaustion can undermine officers’ capacity to follow the law and department regulations. He recommends that police managers, collective bargaining organizations, and police officers together restructure shift assignments and overtime policies to minimize fatigue-related risks.
● Michael D. White reviews a New York Police Department pilot course that teaches officers data- analysis skills. He includes the officers’ assessments of the training and outcomes to show that police valued, retained, and made use of the training. This training model, says White, could be applied to police accountability efforts.
Holding Police Accountable is the first in a series of collaborative publications from the Urban Institute Press and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The volume was edited by Candace McCoy, whose late husband James Fyfe was a professor of criminal justice at American University, Temple University, and, finally, at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The book is available from the Urban Institute Press (ISBN 978-0-87766-765-0, paperback, 252 pages, $26.50). Order online at http://www.uipress.org, call 410-516-6956, or dial 1-800-537-5487 toll-free. Read more at http://www.urban.org/books/holdingpoliceaccountable/.
The Urban Institute, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.
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