Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South

Graeme Blair, Jeremy M. Weinstein, Fotini Christia, Eric Arias, Emile Badran, Robert A. Blair, Ali Cheema, Ahsan Farooqui, Thiemo Fetzer, Guy Grossman, Dotan Haim, Zulfiqar Hameed, Rebecca Hanson, Ali Hasanain, Dorothy Kronick, Benjamin S. Morse, Robert Muggah, Fatiq Nadeem, Lily L. Tsai, Matthew NanesTara Slough, Nico Ravanilla, Jacob N. Shapiro, Barbara Silva, Pedro C.L. Souza, Anna M. Wilke

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Is it possible to reduce crime without exacerbating adversarial relationships between police and citizens? Community policing is a celebrated reform with that aim, which is now adopted on six continents. However, the evidence base is limited, studying reform components in isolation in a limited set of countries, and remaining largely silent on citizen-police trust. We designed six field experiments with Global South police agencies to study locally designed models of community policing using coordinated measures of crime and the attitudes and behaviors of citizens and police. In a preregistered meta-analysis, we found that these interventions led to mixed implementation, largely failed to improve citizen-police relations, and did not reduce crime. Societies may need to implement structural changes first for incremental police reforms such as community policing to succeed.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Article numbereabd3446
    JournalScience
    Volume374
    Issue number6571
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Nov 26 2021

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General

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