Reforming the Police through Procedural Justice Training: A Multi-City Randomized Trial at Crime Hot Spots

Can police be trained to treat people in fair and respectful ways, and if so, will this influence evaluations of the police, and crime? To answer these questions, we randomly allocated 120 crime hot spots to a procedural justice (PJ) and standard condition (SC) in three cities. 28 officers were randomly assigned to the conditions. The PJ condition officers received an intensive 5-day training course in the components of procedural justice (giving voice, showing neutrality, treating people with respect, and evidencing trustworthy motives). We used police self-report surveys to assess whether the training influenced attitudes, systematic social observations to examine impacts on police behavior in the field, and arrests to assess law enforcement actions. We conducted pre and post household surveys to assess resident attitudes toward the police. Impacts on crime were measured using crime incident and citizen- initiated crime call data. The training led to increased knowledge about procedural justice, and more procedurally just behavior in the field. At the same time, PJ officers carried out many fewer arrests than SC officers. Residents of the procedural justice hot spots were significantly less likely to perceive police as harassing or using unnecessary force, though we did not find significant differences between the PJ and SC hot spots in perceptions of procedural justice and legitimacy of police officers. We found a significant relative 14 percent decline in crime incidents in the PJ hot spots during the experiment, and a similar though non-significant relative decline in crime calls.

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