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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
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1

Introduction

Internationally, many governments, citizens, and police themselves are troubled by continued uses of force that occur too frequently, are avoidable, seem excessive, or are perceived to disproportionately target specific populations. The reaction to the death of George Floyd in an encounter with police in the United States is just one example that gave rise to worldwide demonstrations, even amid a global pandemic. While police officers globally are authorized to use physical force in certain situations, for example, as a means of self-defense or to protect others from an attack, excessive use of physical force is one of the most prevalent forms of police misconduct (U.S. Department of State, 2016). National governments and their citizens rely on law enforcement officials to uphold the rule of law (ROL) and protect human life. When police fail to uphold internationally recognized standards regarding the use of force (see Chapter 2), they violate fundamental human rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and security of person, the prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person (United Nations, 2009).

A large network of international and regional organizations, bilateral donors, international financial institutions, and civil society organizations aims to work with governments to curb and eliminate violations at the hands of police. 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 and supports capacity building for criminal justice systems and police organizations in approximately 90 countries. In 2018, guided by The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, INL created the Office of Knowledge Management to assemble evidence

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

from research to inform its work. To support its efforts to synthesize findings from scientific research, INL asked the Committee on Law and Justice (CLAJ) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) to convene an ad hoc consensus committee to review and assess existing evidence on policing institutions, police practices and capacities, and police legitimacy in the international context.

THE COMMITTEE’S CHARGE

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine assembled the Committee on Evidence to Advance Reform in the Global Security and Justice Sectors (“the committee”) to review the available research evidence on how police reform can promote the ROL (including human rights) and protect the public. See Box 1-1 for the committee’s perspective on ROL and protection of the population.

The committee comprises experts in criminology, economics, international and organized crime, law, policing, and political science and brings knowledge and experience from a portfolio of work that spans four continents. Such experience includes conducting research and advising governments on police policy in several countries, including but not limited to Afghanistan, Brazil, Colombia, England, Ghana, India, South Korea, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States (see the Appendix for more details).

The committee was charged with producing five reports, each addressing areas of interest to INL (see Box 1-2). To assist with this assignment, the committee developed a series of five public information-gathering sessions to bring together researchers and practitioners with experience in each subtopic to be examined.

This report is the third in this series, addressing the following questions in the committee’s charge: What policies and practices for police use of force are effective in promoting the ROL 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?1

APPROACH TO THE STUDY

Like the others in the series, this report reflects the development of consensus advice to address the questions in the charge. The committee was tasked to carry out the entire study within a year and a half and release

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1 Each consensus report in the series of five reports will be released in PDF format in sequence of completion.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

each of the five reports separately and sequentially during this period. In forming its advice, the committee draws specifically on information from prepared papers and a single workshop on the topic of the third question as well as its years of experience investigating policing policies and practices.

The public workshop entitled Effective Policies & Practices for Police Use of Force to Promote the Rule of Law and Protect the Population was held virtually on October 20 and 22, 2021. Workshop participants included members of the committee, representatives from INL, and international researchers and practitioners in the area of policing and use of force. An effort was made to assemble a diverse set of participants who work with or study the police in different contexts, including those in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States.

The workshop discussions were framed around commissioned papers prepared by Ignacio Cano, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Geoffrey Alpert, Seth Stoughton, and Kyle McLean, University of South Carolina. Both papers examined existing studies and interventions related to policies and practices that attempt to regulate and control police use of force and provided assessments of the strengths and limitations of the research evidence and data. The Alpert and colleagues (2021) paper reviews available research findings in the areas of policies, training, supervision, selection, and accountability regarding police use of force. The Cano (2021) paper considered polices and measures in six categories: normative approaches in the application of the law, internal control mechanisms, external oversight bodies, training for officers, technology for monitoring, and administrative measures. The committee relied on the assessment and analysis presented in the papers to inform its deliberations.

The workshop provided comparative perspectives on laws and policies for police use of force, the code of silence, the prevalence of torture, and related factors. Presentations also examined the limited and largely disconnected evidence surrounding police use of force and the areas of promise in reducing the use of force in policing. Discussions at the workshop, including those about the commissioned papers, were a primary source of information for the committee’s deliberations. It is important to note that while the science of policing, notably the examination of police use of force, has grown in recent years, it is limited in context. Due to the research available and studies presented to the committee, examples in this report tend to favor studies conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, Latin America, and (to a lesser extent) Africa. This does not mean that problems of police misconduct and excessive use of force are limited to these regions, nor does it mean solutions and opportunities are limited to these contexts.

The committee met four times virtually after the workshop to deliberate on what it learned from the papers and heard at the workshop to reach a consensus on conclusions and recommendations for its report. The

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

committee’s draft report was subsequently reviewed by a set of similar subject matter experts and revised in response to review in accordance with the National Academies’ procedures before being finalized for release.

This report presents the committee’s assessment of the information it has gathered and provides guidance to international donors on steps to advance data collection and knowledge building on police use of force incidents and interventions. It focuses on what is known about efforts to reduce the use of excessive force and what aspects of the problem require further research. It does not contain the complete proceedings of the workshop, but instead draws on resources and descriptions from the workshop discussion as relevant.2

As a project commissioned to conduct five workshops and produce five reports in a rapid production process, the committee’s methods differ somewhat from the single consensus report model, such as the report recently prepared by the ad hoc consensus committee on proactive policing (see NASEM, 2018). The breadth of the current assignment and the speed with which it was required led the committee to rely more on its pre-existing knowledge of the research findings than on systematic reviewing of all available studies—even as new research was published while the project was under way.

SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

Police use of excessive force is a recognized problem, but the scale is widely debated, in part due to data limitations. There are media reports of injuries and deaths at the hands of law enforcement in nearly every country. In the United States, attention to police misconduct has focused on the killing of unarmed Black men and women (Tate et al., 2022); in Iran, reports capture fatal shootings of protestors by police; and in the Philippines, poor people merely suspected of using or selling drugs are at risk of being shot by police (Amnesty International, 2020a; 2020b). The official numbers from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for 2019 put the number of individuals killed by police at 1,810, an average of five per day and a record number since official records began in 1998 (BBC, 2020b). In 2017, military and police personnel from the Russian Republic of Chechnya used excessive force repeatedly in attacks against individuals suspected to be members of the LGBTQ+ community (Benedek, 2018). In Hong Kong, police were accused of responding to peaceful anti-government protests with paramilitary-style

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2 Full recordings of the workshop are available at: https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/08-26-2021/evidence-to-advance-reform-in-the-global-security-and-justice-sectors-workshop-3-public-session-1 and https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/08-27-2021/evidence-to-advancereform-in-the-global-security-and-justice-sectors-workshop-3-public-session-2.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

interventions, resulting in a wider pro-democracy movement demanding an investigation into police misconduct (BBC, 2020a; Stott et al., 2020).

In sum, this is an issue recognized by large portions of the public as a problem, even while the extent and nature of the problem might remain unclear. The lack of scientific evidence on the prevalence or correlates of police use of force is directly related to the reluctance of many governments, including the United States, to collect and provide regular data on the number of people killed or wounded during police encounters. Some high-income countries routinely report some of these data (Zimring, 2017), including Australia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Yet these are the exceptions. The lack of transparency about the extent of excessive force may pose a major threat to the ROL and to trust in state institutions. In some countries, media and civil society organizations have begun compiling individual cases and generating estimates of people killed in police encounters. These non-governmental efforts to assemble reliable information are encouraging; however, data on police use of force remain limited in most developing countries (Amnesty International, 2021; Cano, 2021; Lethal Force Monitor, 2020; Peeples, 2020; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2018).

Further complicating the problem of estimating the scale of police use of force is ambiguity with respect to the definition of force itself (National Institute of Justice, 2020). Use of force has been defined and interpreted in several ways, including: mere police presence, verbal commands, physical use of force (e.g., defensive restraints, punches, kicks, throws), the use of less-lethal devices (e.g., batons, pepper spray, electro-muscular disruption devices, beanbag rounds), the employment of canines on people, and the use of firearms or other deadly weapons on civilians. Another factor complicating the estimation of the scale of police use of force is the different settings in which use of force takes place, such as during arrests, in custodial settings, or during protests or demonstrations. In the absence of reliable systems for transparency and collection of complaints, data on uses of force in custodial settings can be particularly difficult to document.

How use of force is defined influences how it is measured. Due to the variability in its definition, it is challenging to standardize data collection on use of force across police agencies and countries. For example, limiting the form of “injury” to only fatal outcomes specifically due to the use of firearms can help delineate a common denominator for measurement, given the lack of measurement of other indicators. However, excluding the numerous other instances where use of force occurs, but does not result in death by firearm, leads to an incomplete picture of the occurrences themselves and their adverse consequences, as well as the fatality risk associated with using different kinds of implements (e.g., batons, canines, water cannons).

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

For the purposes of this report and guidance to international donors, the committee does not attempt to define excessive or reasonable force for all countries at all times. It takes the position that donors should strongly encourage their partner nations to define what excessive force means in their jurisdictions, improve their transparency on this definition, and increase data collection on the level and frequency of force used in police interactions with the public. The committee also agrees that any country’s failure to publish a complete annual count of persons killed by police undermines the ROL.

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS AND CAUSES OF EXCESSIVE FORCE

Social science scholars have long debated whether a range of social and political phenomena result from structures, institutions, rules, and processes that determine and constrain individuals’ choices, or from individual agency. Although the “structure vs. agency” debate may seem like a mere academic matter, it is particularly important when considering the drivers of police use of force. This distinction is relevant to assess the many interventions that are aimed at minimizing police use of force. Do officers resort to the use of force because of individual decisions related to individual characteristics, knowledge, and experiences? Or do officers’ use of force depend on institutional structures such as formal legal rules, administrative procedures, and organizational norms?

The answers to these questions are of fundamental importance for designing use-of-force policies and training programs. Accordingly, when assessing research about police use of force, one must be attentive to the level of analysis.

Individual studies often focus on one level. For instance, Ba and colleagues (2021) examine individual characteristics, like race and gender, as determinants of officer decisions to use force. Owens and colleagues (2018), on the other hand, highlight the importance of organizational practices—a modified supervisory strategy to model procedural justice and encourage “slowing down” officers’ thought processes—to minimize police use of force. Meanwhile, Magaloni and Rodriguez (2020) signal the significance of macro-level policies as drivers of police use of force; both in terms of increased use, resulting from militarized security operations in Mexico, and reduced use, after restricting the practice of confessions as evidence in criminal trials.

As these studies suggest, police use of force is a multi-faceted issue. In assessing evidence regarding approaches to minimize use of force, it is important to consider the factors across multiple levels (from national laws to individuals’ characteristics) that may cause use of force to vary, and to determine whether the appropriate interventions to address it ought to

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

target individual officers, the organization, or macro-level policy change, as well as the interaction among all three.

SOCIETAL ATTITUDES TOWARD POLICE VIOLENCE

The police are a key entity of the state authorized to use force for legitimate purposes in regard to promoting the ROL, responding to crime, and protecting the population (Bayley, 1985). As such, the use of force is a central factor in shaping citizen support and trust of police, and the state more broadly. Scholars have found public support for unconstrained use of force by police in some countries in response to high crime rates, including in South Africa (Smith, 2019), Brazil (Ahnen, 2007), and the Philippines (Tusalem, 2019). Public popularity has in turn been an effective electoral strategy, with politicians promising aggressive approaches to addressing crime often finding electoral success (Holland, 2013).

But recent scholarly research has also shown that routine police abuse of its authority to use force comes at a cost and may well undermine public support and legitimacy. In the Central American context, Cruz (2015) finds that police misconduct, including physical abuse, erodes public support for police and government overall. Looking at Costa Rica, Gingerich and Oliveros (2018) find that observing police violence makes citizens less willing to report crime to the police. Scholars have similarly examined the relationship between police violence and willingness to cooperate with the police in the United States. A study by Desmond and colleagues (2016) found that a high-profile case of police misconduct in Milwaukee led to fewer 911 calls, particularly among Black residents. Although this study’s analysis has been called into question (Zoorob, 2020), a recent working paper by Ang and colleagues (2021) draws on a comparison between ShotSpotter data and 911 calls in eight U.S. cities which found a drop in 911 calls following the high-profile killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Scholars have also shown that public perceptions of police can change in response to police violence. González (2020) showed that the proportion of citizens in São Paulo, Brazil, that considered the state’s police to be “too violent” rose from 44 to 73 percent immediately following widely broadcasted footage of police use of excessive force. Notably, scholars have also shown that changes in public attitudes do not occur uniformly across the population. In the context of Uganda, Curtice (2021) draws on evidence from a natural experiment to demonstrate that public perceptions of police became more negative following police repression, with the greatest effect among regime opponents. In the United States, Jefferson and colleagues (2021) similarly find differences in perceptions of officer-involved shootings by race.

Taken together, these studies suggest that, while public support for police taking a more aggressive stance to curb crime and violence may pose

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×

an obstacle to efforts to minimize police use of force, excessive and unlawful use of force by police not only undermines the ROL, it may also reduce public support and cooperation.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

Following this introduction, Chapter 2 reviews common approaches aimed at minimizing police use of force. It captures background information on laws and standards for police use of force, external oversight bodies, training, internal accountability, technologies, and administrative incentives. This chapter in large part summarizes the findings and examples presented to the committee in the commissioned papers. Chapter 3 offers the committee’s shared understanding of the state of knowledge regarding police policies and practices for the use of force. It also provides recommendations for international donors and reasonable steps forward to minimize the level of force used by police, identifies data needs, and focuses on use of force policies, training, and accountability mechanisms. The Appendix provides biographical sketches of committee members and study staff.

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
Page 11
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
Page 12
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
Page 13
Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26582.
×
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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, and attempts to control protests and 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 aim 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.

Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally, the third in a series of five reports produced for INL, addresses what policies and practices for police use of force are effective in promoting the rule of law and protecting the population (including the officers themselves). This report looks at what is known about effective practices and their implementation and identifies promising actions to be taken by international donors in their efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies.

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