Intensive training of police leads to reduced crime, fewer arrests and more positive interactions

National policing institute

Scientists at the National Policing Institute, George Mason University, Arizona State University, and University of Pennsylvania conducted a study with the help of Arnold Ventures. The study was published in the PNAS.

Can police officers be trained in procedural justice to reduce crime? An intensive, randomized controlled trial conducted in high-crime places produced evidence that training officers to operate according to the principles of procedural justice changed officer behavior, reduced arrests, and reduced crime. The police officers who worked on the streets had a better perception of themselves. Good news for police, community leaders, and others who seek ways to reduce crime while improving police-community relations from the findings.

Giving people a voice, showing neutrality, treating people with respect, and showing trustworthy motives are some of the components of procedural justice. Training officers are more likely to behave in procedurally just ways.

The study's findings provide important information about a strategy that can be implemented broadly for leaders who are looking for ways to control crime while also improving relations between the police and the community.

This significant scientific experiment confirms that it is possible to reduce crime and improve police-community relationships through improved training and supervision. This intervention can benefit all officers and improve police-community interactions. We owe a debt of gratitude to the officers, supervisors and agency leaders who cooperated fully with data collection and all the experimental conditions. Their willingness to engage and support the scientific process is indicative of their commitment to improved policing.

As our nation continues to grapple with the social impacts of the Pandemic and a spike in homicides, it is critical that we build a body of evidence about what works to reduce community violence. Police departments across the country should learn from these results and require high-quality procedural justice training as a core component of any hot spot crime reduction program.

Ann Ardis, Dean of George Mason University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said that the release of the research comes at an extremely pertinent time when many across the country are taking a closer look at police training.

There are only a small number of randomized experiments looking at the effects of police training on behavior and community perception. This study adds to the evidence base for procedural justice training and expands our understanding of how training impacts interactions between police and the public. One of the authors of the study said that they view their findings as important for efforts to enhance fairness and effectiveness in policing.

The study was done in three cities: Tucson, Arizona; Houston, Texas; and Cambridge, Massachusetts. More than 1,000 hours of observations and more than 1,500 surveys were done in those cities to confirm how the training of officers impacted outcomes. The intervention group received 40 hours of training in procedural justice concepts and the practical use of the approach, while the control group received no procedural justice training and followed standard operating procedures. In order to study the crime hot spots in the three cities, the officers were allocated randomly to 120 of them.

The study team collected a variety of data: self-reports before and after the training to assess whether the training influenced officer attitudes; systematic observations of officers to understand how the training impacted officer behaviors while interacting with the community; arrest data to assess law enforcement actions; and household surveys before and after

More information: David Weisburd et al, Reforming the police through procedural justice training: A multicity randomized trial at crime hot spots, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2118780119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Provided by National Policing Institute Citation: Intensive training of police leads to reduced crime, fewer arrests and more positive interactions (2022, March 30) retrieved 30 March 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-03-intensive-police-crime-positive-interactions.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.