Policing to Promote the Rule of Law and Protect the Population An Evidence-Based Approach (2022) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Introduction and Overview
1 Introduction and Overview
Pages 13-30
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From page 13... ...
the architecture necessary for international drug control and cross-border law enforcement cooperation."1 To advance its own efforts to build knowledge, assess existing evidence, and improve its programs, INL asked the Committee on Law and Justice (CLAJ) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 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.2 1 For more information about the Bureau, see https://www.state.gov/about-us-bureau of-international-narcotics-and-law-enforcement-affairs.
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It is not only a question of "what works," but "what works where" and "what works when." The committee was asked to consider these concerns and contexts while at the same time determining the applicability of existing research knowledge in policing, some of which has been reviewed by previous CLAJ consensus committees (see National Research Council [NRC] , 2004, 2005; and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine [NASEM]
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Panelists were invited from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, the United Nations Police Division, and academic institutions with expertise in researching these themes and experience in executing police reforms. Discussions at the workshop were a primary source of information for the committee's deliberations, and speakers were identified based on the relevance of their work to the study question.
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Drawing on relevant lit erature, particularly from the international context, the project will inform the State Department's capacity-building activities aimed at strengthening the effectiveness of local, in-country law enforcement agencies, building the technical skills of for eign law enforcement personnel through training and technical assistance, and assisting in institutional police reform at the local level. Each of the five (5)
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The amount and type of assistance provided to specific police organizations and functions vary and are typically based on country-specific assessments. In some cases, INL police assistance programs may target areas for functional reform and capacity building, such as improving police training, internal accountability, police-community relations, civil disorder management and control, or management and supervision.6 All such programs share a general proposition that assistance from the United States can contribute to sustainable, institutional development in partner countries.
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For example, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs defines it as: A principle of governance in which all persons, institutions, and entities, public, and private, including the state itself, are accountable to [domes tic]
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From page 19... ...
Human Rights and Public Protection Both the ROL definitions cited above highlight the principle that the laws of a state, as well as their enforcement, should be "consistent with international human rights norms and standards." Adherence to human rights standards, understood as a set of normative commitments (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2017) , is related to increased legitimacy in policing, including aspects such as restraining from the abuse of force and the provision of safety to the citizens to ensure they can exercise their rights and obligations.
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It fulfils this mission by deploying on-site visits to observe the general human rights situation in a country, but can also investigate specific situations, and examine complaints or petitions regarding specific cases of human rights violations. Regular reports issued by these bodies will likely provide valuable insights to agencies providing foreign assistance, like INL.
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Sherman articulated the link between evidence-based policing and rule-of-law societies when he argued: No institution is more important to that success than the police, whose 12 See https://www.policefoundation.org/publication/evidence-based-policing. 13 Such desired outcomes, particularly for the aim of promoting the rule of law and protecting the public, may include improving police legitimacy and minimizing police use of excessive force, justice-related discrimination, and disparities in criminal victimization.
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Steps Toward Evidence-Based Policing An evidence-based approach is applicable to all international police reform efforts. To promote the rule of law and protect the population, an evidence-based policing approach requires: (1)
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Having high-quality information on both crime and internal police functioning can then facilitate more accurate targeting of problems with solutions supported by evidence, rather than the indiscriminate implementation of vague or non-evidencebased approaches. This capacity building equally requires a commitment to transparency, accountability, and responsible spending related to police activities and actions.
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Receptivity. Even when research is translated, an evidence-based policing approach requires that law enforcement agencies and their officers build receptivity to this knowledge, which in turn demands educational, structural, and cultural adjustments in law enforcement agencies that allow officers and agencies to be amenable to such knowledge (see specific examples in Lum and Koper, 2017)
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From page 25... ...
• Resistance to Change • Ineffective Organizational Management • Reactive Rather than Proactive Policing • Dual or Multiple-Level Entry into Police Service • Existence of Public Corruption • Absence of Police Accountability • Host Nation Resource Allocation Favors Military • Human Rights Abuses • [Underrepresentation] of Women in Policing • Poor Coordination Within Criminal Justice System.
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, may provide a path forward, as it allows planners to think about bypassing some barriers rather than confronting them directly. Such mapping, in the policing context, would consider how imported ideas may be received by local law enforcement and political elites, and how such ideas may be transformed once filtered through local interests and dispositions as well as the political will necessary to ensure not only that knowledge is accepted but that it is also effectively implemented (Hills, 2012)
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However, if a set of globally reliable measures could be developed to pass some global tests of reliability principles, there would be far greater benefits for guiding police development. Whether reliable measurement across countries and within them over time becomes more likely by improving existing measures (see discussion below)
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A comparison of these two indices is available in Appendix A The evidence reviewed by the committee suggests that research can, in principle, measure whether police reforms can support basic tenets of and potentially improve ROL.
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executive bribery 26 The following is a snapshot of information on the World Justice Project and its ROL Index; for reference and additional information, see https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/ research-and-data/wjp-rule-law-index-2020. 27 The following is a snapshot of information on the Varieties of Democracies Project and its ROL Index; for reference and additional information, see https://www.v-dem.net/en.
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foreign assistance and the capacity building of criminal justice systems and police organizations in developing countries of need. Appendix A offers a validation exercise of two ROL correlates, and Appendix B provides biographical sketches of committee members and study staff.
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