Summary

Injury and death from use of excessive force by police officers remain a common concern in countries across the globe. Despite local, national, and international attempts to legislate and provide guidance for police use of force, there continue to be global accounts of excessive force by law enforcement. Reports of officer-involved killings, injuries to citizens, attempts to control protests as well as demonstrations with chemical irritants, rubber bullets, and sometimes shooting into crowds with live ammunition frequently appear in the press worldwide. However, reliable data on and accounting for these incidents are both lacking.

A large network of international and regional organizations, bilateral donors, international financial institutions, and civil society organizations aims to work with governments to improve policing practices and reduce police use of excessive force. As a part of that network, the U.S. Department of State, through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), provides foreign assistance to and supports capacity building for criminal justice systems and police organizations in approximately 90 countries. Like many donors, it strives to direct its resources to the most effective approaches to achieve its mission.

As part of its efforts to distill available knowledge and improve its programs, INL asked the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene an ad hoc committee to review, assess, and reach consensus on existing evidence on policing institutions, police practices and capacities, and police legitimacy in the international context. A committee was assembled with expertise in criminology, economics, international and organized crime, law, policing,

and political science. The committee was tasked to produce five reports, addressing questions of interest to INL and the State Department. This report, the third in this series, is in response to the following questions: What policies and practices for police use of force are effective in promoting the rule of law and protecting the population (including officers themselves)? What is known about effective practices for implementing those policies and practices in recruitment, training, and internal affairs?

Police use of force is an expansive topic with numerous scientific questions yet to be studied and answered. The studies that have been done examine policies, training, selection of officers, supervision, and accountability in some contexts; however, many of the policies and programs implemented by police agencies have yet to be rigorously evaluated. In addition, deficiencies in reliable records on police use of force impedes progress in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. Most evidence, when it does exist, concerns incidents of lethal force, since deaths are more likely to be reported than other harms. However, even this information can be unreliable in some countries.

While the existing knowledge base is limited, research in this area is growing. The determination of policies and practices to minimize excessive force by police cannot be made on robust evidence at this time. Still, there are sound theoretical assumptions and reliable findings across policing studies to inform promising approaches and efforts to advance knowledge in the area. This report, drawing on the committee’s understanding of the scientific literature on police use of force and normative positions to promote the rule of law and protect the population, offers the committee’s consensus view of promising actions to be taken by international donors in their efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. The committee’s recommendations are presented here and discussed further in Chapter 3.

RECOMMENDATION 2: While most use of force by police is not lethal, frequent incidences of excessive force can cause great harm to the public as it can undermine the rule of law, trust in the police, and in state institutions more broadly. International donor organizations such as U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs should encourage as well as fund police agencies to develop and enforce digital record-keeping on each use of force incident with or with potential of serious injuries, such as all police-citizen interactions where firearms or other weapons are employed. These records should identify officers using force, the nature of force, the weapon used, the locations of the incidents, the time and date of each incident, as well as personal identifiers and demographic information for citizens involved. Technical assistance should be granted to develop ongoing analyses of the patterns of less-than-lethal force incidents, including concentrations of events among individual officers, specific places, and times.

RECOMMENDATION 3: Innovations intended to minimize police use of force should be supported by international donor organizations, such as U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Police agencies should work in partnerships with independent social and data scientists to design impact assessments in order to evaluate and continuously improve their reform programs.

RECOMMENDATION 4: International donor organizations, such as U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, should work with implementing partners to ensure that policies on police use of force have been developed or reviewed in consultation with relevant police oversight bodies and ombuds institutions. These policies should be impartially enforced, clearly defined, aligned with human rights standards, inclusive of mechanisms for civilian oversight, communicated to police officers through ongoing training opportunities, and regularly reviewed for effectiveness.

RECOMMENDATION 5: International donor organizations should incentivize robust evaluations of training outcomes through extra funding assistance for partners willing to evaluate training programs, particularly any programs aimed at improving officers’ skills at deescalating situations before resorting to use of force. Where possible, evaluations should be done by comparing on-the-job actions taken by training participants and non-participants and linking completion of these programs with official records and data on use of force over time.

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