Policing to Promote the Rule of Law and Protect the Population An Evidence-Based Approach (2022) / Chapter Skim
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2 Organizational Structures for Policing
2 Organizational Structures for Policing
Pages 31-44
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From page 31... ...
The effort invested in reorganizing police agencies, as many Global North nations have done in recent years, offers no clear link to any changes in policing outputs or outcomes. Nevertheless, there are certain features of police agencies in some countries that attract the support of experienced observers, including the discussants in our workshop.
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From page 32... ...
According to Flores-Macías, these variations in organizational structures influence the physical and psychological distance between police and the population. In Latin America, this distance is widening, and it is viewed as contributing to police indifference to escalating conflict and human rights violations (see Box 2-1 for additional information on the militarization of the police in Latin America)
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From page 33... ...
In this context, civilian police departments have struggled for decades to contain rising violent crime. A combination of state weakness and electoral incentives is leading politi cians to react to complex public safety problems by deploying the armed forces.
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From page 34... ...
identifies no change in reported violent crime after the 1033 program was terminated and much of the acquired military equipment was returned. In addition to issues of measurement and aggregation, none of these studies is able to estimate the "first stage impact" of these transfers on the actual use of military-style equipment by the department; the methods are limited to what economists call "reduced form" analyses, without a clear measure of exactly how much the 1033 program actually increased police militarization.
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From page 35... ...
Public opinion supporting use of the military for police tasks has been tied to low esteem for police in many developing countries. Studies analyzing public opinion data from the Latinobarómetro and the Afrobarometer show high levels of citizen distrust in the civilian police force "to do its job in a successful, transparent, and humane manner" (p.
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From page 36... ...
It is unclear whether the effects estimated in these studies are generalizable beyond that specific context, namely where constabularization is part of a crackdown on highly organized and violent drug cartels. On the other hand, there is suggestive evidence that using military forces to patrol the streets reduces crime.
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From page 37... ...
Militarization in the Mexican police has been associated with greater homicidal violence and human rights violations, but further study is needed to see if these findings hold outside the Mexican context. Studies in the United States on the militarization of police (whether through transfer of military-grade weapons or SWAT-style teams)
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From page 38... ...
of military and civil police forces in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais resulted in a 24 percent reduction in property crime and a 13 percent reduction in violent crime, yet this finding may be primarily about numbers of people in uniforms on patrol, not about organization per se. There is little available evidence on the effects of formal consolidation of police jurisdictions, as occasionally occurs in the United States when small jurisdictions cede policing authority (as a cost-saving measure)
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From page 39... ...
Together, the nature of discretion, the ROL, and checks and balances provide information about the environment and the context in which operations occur. O'Connor differentiated between "thick" and "thin" versions of the ROL, saying that a thin version is to apply the law simply as it is written, but the thick version is interlocked with human rights and interlinked with good governance.
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From page 40... ...
Analysis by human rights groups and security experts suggest such experiments pose serious human rights and safety concerns1 as well as risks for further violence.2 Moreover, public safety provision may also involve a range of private actors, from the proliferation of private security companies (which typically do not have police powers such as the authority to arrest) to cooperation and support from the business sector.
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From page 41... ...
. Other models include the Central Bureau of Investigation in India, which can investigate state-run police agencies; the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota, which has investigated numerous police killings of citizens; and the Federal Police of Brazil, which collaborated in the BOX 2-3 Police Oversight Structures (Workshop Presentation)
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From page 42... ...
In the United States, the elected local district attorneys in each county have the legal power to investigate the police, but may rarely do so because of the symbiotic relationships between police and prosecutors in convicting serious criminals. Because of concern about under-investigation due to this relationship, in 1972 New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller appointed a deputy state attorney general as a special prosecutor for corruption in the New York City criminal justice system.
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From page 43... ...
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES FOR POLICING 43 promoting an accountable policing agency from within the organization are examined in Chapter 3. CONCLUSION This chapter has examined the limited evidence, primarily from case studies and the experience of police reform efforts, on whether and how organizational structures of policing agencies affect the agencies' capability to both promote the ROL and protect the population.
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