Procedural justice training reduces police use of force and complaints against officers

George Wood; Tom R Tyler; Andrew V Papachristos

doi:10.1073/pnas.1920671117

Procedural justice training reduces police use of force and complaints against officers

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 May 5;117(18):9815-9821. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1920671117. Epub 2020 Apr 20.

Authors

George Wood¹, Tom R Tyler², Andrew V Papachristos^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; george.wood@northwestern.edu.
² Yale Law School, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
³ Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
⁴ Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.

Abstract

Existing research shows that distrust of the police is widespread and consequential for public safety. However, there is a shortage of interventions that demonstrably reduce negative police interactions with the communities they serve. A training program in Chicago attempted to encourage 8,480 officers to adopt procedural justice policing strategies. These strategies emphasize respect, neutrality, and transparency in the exercise of authority, while providing opportunities for civilians to explain their side of events. We find that training reduced complaints against the police by 10.0% and reduced the use of force against civilians by 6.4% over 2 y. These findings affirm the feasibility of changing the command and control style of policing which has been associated with popular distrust and the use of force, through a broad training program built around the concept of procedurally just policing.

Keywords: complaints; force; misconduct; policing; procedural justice.