Law Enforcement – CPE’S Approach

CPE'S APPROACH

The Justice Navigator Assessment is an essential tool in CPE's three-part approach to addressing racial disparities in public safety.

1 Measure and monitor

Collecting and analyzing data helps departments better understand current problems and measure future progress.

2 Investigate to learn more

If a disparity is identified, we’ll show how to learn as much as possible about the situations when it occurs or is most severe.

3 Identify risk factors and develop targeted interventions

The data will help departments investigate and identify risk factors that may contribute to the disparity. Once risk factors are identified, we’ll suggest ways to improve written policies in order to reduce the risk of inequitable policing. From there, departments can work with the community to develop and implement targeted interventions to address the specific risk factors that are within their control.

We also offer personalized analysis and solution strategies through our COMPSTAT for Justice program.

The following pages in this Law Enforcement section provide clear steps toward more equitable policing. While our guidance is aimed at agencies who have already partnered with CPE and received a Justice Navigator assessment, it can also help departments prepare to receive an assessment or begin data-driven reform efforts, as well as community members engaging in this work. To learn more about working with CPE to receive a Justice Navigator assessment, contact us here.

CPE's science-based approach to reducing inequitable policing

Many people believe that racial discrimination is the product of bad intentions and bad character. As a result, they believe that promoting equity requires changing hearts and minds. However, science tells us something different: that situations predict people’s behavior more strongly than their attitudes alone. In order to reduce and eliminate disparities in public safety, we therefore have to address the systems and situations that allow them to happen.

Our guidance helps law enforcement agencies make actionable changes based on their Justice Navigator results.

There are four main categories of risk factors that can make law enforcement agencies vulnerable to inequitable policing outcomes.

1 Organizational risk factors

Organizational risk factors are created by operational processes, policies, practices, cultural norms, and expectations of behavior.

2 Strategic risk factors

Strategic risk factors are decisions that law enforcement agencies make with the goal of promoting public safety that may unintentionally worsen disparities. For example, deployment decisions or enforcement priorities that disproportionately concentrate officers in particular communities may increase disparities in stops and use of force.

3 Intrapersonal risk factors

Intrapersonal risk factors are beliefs and attitudes that increase the risk that individual officers will consciously or unconsciously treat people inequitably, especially in certain situations. While these risk factors operate at the individual level, systems and structures can create chronic interpersonal risk, for example, by allowing an individual to express an attitude in their behavior.

4 External risk factors

External risk factors exist outside of a police department and may be less directly within the department’s direct control than organizational and strategic risk factors. However, they have direct implications for policing practices and agencies’ ability to mitigate risks. One common external risk factor is lack of social services for individuals living with severe mental illness, substance use disorder, or homelessness. Importantly, though, external risk factors can also present situations that increase the risk of some intrapersonal risk factors causing discriminatory behavior.

Much of our guidance focuses on addressing organizational risk factors by, for example, improving and clarifying written policies. This is because law enforcement agencies have the most direct control over organizational and strategic risk factors. However, our guidance also points to ways that departments can begin to understand and address their strategic, intrapersonal, and external risk factors.

Summary of the evidence that informs CPE’s approach

Our approach of addressing risk factors for discrimination is informed by a wide array of social science research. This summary outlines the key takeaways of that research and points to further reading.1

Widespread cultural stereotypes influence our daily interactions.

To understand how situational factors create risk of inequitable policing, it is important to first understand how racial bias influences people’s perceptions and behavior. Due to deeply ingrained cultural stereotypes, people automatically associate Black people with criminality, aggressiveness, and danger2, and people also view Black children as older and less innocent than White children of the same age.3 People perceive a neighborhood’s crime problem to be worse when more Black people (particularly young Black men) live in it, even after accounting for differences in actual crime rates.4 Other marginalized groups like unhoused people, people with serious mental illness, people with substance abuse disorders, undocumented immigrants, and sex workers are also the subjects of widespread negative cultural stereotypes that make them vulnerable to dehumanization, exclusion, neglect, and violence.5

These stereotypes have consequences for encounters between police and members of the public. Stereotypes can lead people to interpret the same facial expressions or behaviors as more hostile or threatening when looking at a Black person as compared to a White person and can affect how people perceive another person’s speed and motion.6 Racial bias can also influence how accurately and quickly people identify the presence of weapons, making people more likely to “shoot” unarmed Black people than unarmed White people in simulations, especially when they are new to the shooting task.7

While virtually all people are impacted by cultural stereotypes, situations can affect how much stereotypes influence decision-making. People who value inclusion and equality towards all racial groups can still engage in disparate behavior toward Black people and other marginalized groups, particularly when social norms are not clear—or worse, normalize harm. That is why a fundamental part of our approach to addressing racial disparities is creating clear social norms and rules that direct officer behavior.

Situations play a key role in determining when stereotypes lead to racially disparate behavior.

People are more likely to rely on stereotypes in certain situations. One example is when our limited mental resources for processing information, making decisions, and controlling behavior are reduced—a phenomenon known as cognitive depletion. Cognitive depletion is a risk factor for disparate policing because it can make officers more likely to rely on shortcuts like stereotypes when making decisions.

Cognitive depletion happens when a person is tired, hungry, multi-tasking, mentally taxed, or under time pressure.8 Its effects have been documented in judges who ruled less favorably in between meals9 and physicians who prescribed more unnecessary medicine when working longer shifts.10 In law enforcement, sheriffs’ deputies were more likely to be involved in use of force incidents and more likely to be the subject of ethics complaints after working long days.11

Individual-level factors can also determine the influence of stereotypes.

In addition to situations, individual-level factors such as personal values can also determine whether stereotypes lead to racially disparate behavior. For example, people who are motivated by a desire to limit their prejudice show less prejudiced reactions to Black people than people who are less motivated to limit their prejudice.12 Additionally, individuals’ support of social hierarchies may determine how likely they are to enforce their perception of social order if they hold a dominant racial identity.

Specifically, White police officers who show support for social hierarchies and are more likely to use force than White police officers who are less supportive of social hierarchies.13 Organizational changes such as strengthening hiring practices can help reduce the risk that individual-level risk factors lead to disparate behavior in policing. However, larger-scale organizational, structural, and cultural factors may also need to change to limit the influence of individual-level factors.

Organizational changes can reduce these risk factors and improve equity.

When departments understand factors that increase the risk of disparate policing, they can take steps to address them. Setting and enforcing clear, unambiguous expectations of officer behavior is one important way that departments can promote equity. When norms of expected behavior are clear, officers are more likely to treat people equally.14 Officers working under more restricted use of force policies have been shown to use force less readily than officers working under less restrictive policies.15 Norms and rules are only clear when they are enforced and when fellow officers are following these norms and setting an example, making effective accountability mechanisms crucial. As an example of the effect of accountability, a New York Police Department requirement to document all stops appears to have limited unnecessary stops because it increased officers’ perception that their decisions were under increased scrutiny and had a higher risk of sanction.16

Cultural changes to a department can also reduce situational risk of disparate behavior. Strengthening procedural justice, or the fairness within departments, may help improve officers’ well-being and their endorsement of democratic forms of policing.17 And organizational changes to reduce the risk of cognitive depletion might include limiting officer fatigue through schedule changes and shift length policies. Similarly, internal policies that promote de-escalation tactics can help limit how much officers experience time pressure and feel threatened during encounters with community members.

The following sections of our guidance outline concrete steps to use these insights from science to improve equity in policing practices.

Bibliography

This summary draws extensively from two articles in particular: Swencionis, J.K. & Goff, P.A. (2017), The psychological science of racial bias and policing. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 23(4), 398-409 and Goff, P.A. & Rau, H. (2020), Predicting Bad Policing: Theorizing Burdensome and Racially Disparate Policing through the Lenses of Social Psychology and Routine Activities. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 67-88.
Devine, P.G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5-18; Eberhardt, J.L. et al (2004). Seeing Black: Race, Crime and Visual Processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(6), 876-893.
Goff, P.A. et al (2014). The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(4), 526-545.
Qullia, L. and Pager, D. (2001). Black Neighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in Evaluations of Neighborhood Crime. American Journal of Sociology, 107(3), 717-767.
Cuddy, A.J., Fiske, S.T. & Glick, P. (2007). The BIAS map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(4), 631-648; Harris, L.T. & and Fiske, S.T. (2006). Social groups that elicit disgust are differentially processed in mPFC. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2(1), 45-51.
Hugenberg, K. & Bodenhausen, G.V. (2003). Facing Prejudice: Implicit Prejudice and the Perception of Facial Threat. Psychological Science, 14(6), 640-643; Kentrick, A.C. et al (2016). Moving while black: intergroup attitudes influence judgements of speed. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(2), 147-154; Duncan, B.L. (1976). Differential social perception and attribution of intergroup violence: Testing the lower limits of stereotyping of blacks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(6), 876-93.
Plant, E. A., & Peruche. B.M. (2005). The consequences of race for police officers’ responses to criminal suspects. Psychological Science, 16(3), 180-184; Plant, E. A., Peruche, B. M., & Butz, D.A. (2005). Eliminating automatic racial bias: Making race non-diagnostic for responses to criminal suspects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41(2), 141-156; Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 181-92; Correll, J. et al. (2002). The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1314-1329; Correll, J. et al. (2007). Across the thin blue line: Police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1006-1023.

Blair, I.V. (2002). The Malleability of Automatic Stereotypes and Prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(3), 242-261; Kahnman & Eagan, 2011; Sim, J.J., Correll, J. & Sadler, M.S. (2013). Understanding Police and Expert Performance: When Training Attenuates (vs. Exacerbates) Stereotypic Bias in the Decision to Shoot, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(3), 291-304.

Danziger, S., Levav, J. & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(17), 6889-6892.Danziger, S., Levav, J. & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(17), 6889-6892.

Linder, J.A. et al. (2014). Time of Day and the Decision to Prescribe Antibiotics. Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine, 174(12), 2029-2031.

King County Auditor’s Office. (2017). King County Sheriff’s Office Overtime: Better Strategy Could Reduce Hidden Costs and Safety Risks.

Dunton, B.C. & Fazio, R.H. (1997). An Individual Difference Measure of Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(3), 316-326; Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (2004). Aversive racism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 1–52.

Swencionis, J. K., Pouget, E. R., & Goff, P. A. (2021). Supporting Social Hierarchy is Associated with White Police Officers’ Use of Force. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118, 1-9.

Dovidio, J. F. (2001). On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The third wave. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 829-849; Goff & Rau 2020; Swencionis and Goff 2017.

Terrill, W. & Paoline, E.A. (2017). Police Use of Less Lethal Force: Does Administrative Policy Matter? Justice Quarterly, 42(2), 193-216.

Mummolo, J. (2018). Modern Police Tactics, Police-Citizen Interactions, and the Prospects for Reform. The Journal of Politics, 80(1), 1-15.

Trinkner, R., Tyler, T.R., & Goff, P.A. (2016). Justice from within: The relations between a procedurally just organizational climate and police organizational efficiency, endorsement of democratic policing, and officer well-being. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 22(2), 158-172.