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Research has yet to establish whether restorative justice can rebuild relationships between communities and the police. The current study examines a novel diversion program centred around police officer and arrestee restorative justice conferences. The two-year evaluation uses interviews with police officers and arrestees and surveys of arrestees to assess participants' perceptions of the program and each other. Both groups were satisfied with the program and highly supported its continuation. Participants recognized the feelings or situations of others and humanized them. Both groups reported intentions to change their behaviours in future encounters, with officers intending to improve communication and arrestees discussing avoidance. Arrestees maintained neutral or somewhat positive perceptions of police. Arrestees in the second year had more positive perceptions of legitimacy, police interactions, and procedural justice than protesters arrested in year one. The results suggest that conferences could be a promising approach for agencies seeking to rebuild strained police–community relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Body-worn cameras (BWC) have diffused rapidly throughout policing as a means of promoting transparency and accountability. Yet, whether to release BWC footage to the public remains largely up to the discretion of police executives, and we know little about how they interpret and respond to BWC footage – particularly footage involving critical incidents. We asked a nationally representative sample of police executives (N = 476) how supportive they were of legislation that would mandate releasing BWC footage upon request as public information, and presented them with an experimental vignette about BWC capturing one of their officers fatally shooting an [armed/unarmed] [Black/White] suspect. Results indicated inconsistency in executives' attitudes and decision-making: (1) less than one-third of executives supported such legislation, (2) suspect race and armed/unarmed status shaped how executives felt media would cover the incident and whether they would state publicly that the shooting was justified, and (3) agency size conditioned the effects of armed/unarmed status on executives' perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 2016, approximately one half of American police agencies had adopted body-worn cameras (BWCs). Although a growing body of research has examined the impact of BWCs on outcomes such as use of force, complaints, and perceptions of police, few have considered how and why some agencies adopted BWCs, while others have not. With guidance from the diffusion of innovations paradigm, this study explores variation in BWC adoption by police agencies. Drawing on a survey administered to a national probability sample of 665 municipal police executives in the spring of 2018, we found agency size, region, and the demographic composition of municipalities were associated with BWC usage. We then examined executives' support for (or opposition to) legislation that would require BWC footage to be released publicly. Results suggest (a) a variety of environmental factors were associated with support and (b) the correlates of support varied across agencies of different sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial disparities in officer-involved shootings have dominated the national discourse recently. Unfortunately, we have yet to identify an appropriate benchmark, or at-risk population, to put these observed racial disparities into context. In this article, we use seven benchmarks—based on population data from the US Census, police-citizen interaction data from the Police-Public Contact Survey, and arrest data from the Uniform Crime Report—to compare OIS fatality rates for black and white citizens from 2015 to 2017. Using population, police-citizen interactions, or total arrests as a benchmark, we observe that black citizens appear more likely than white citizens to be fatally shot by police officers in both years. Using violent crime arrests or weapons offense arrests, we observe that black citizens appear less likely to be fatally shot by police officers. We discuss why population data is a fundamentally flawed benchmark, and elaborate the strengths and weaknesses of using police-citizen interaction or arrest benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]