Dotan Haim

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 Nanes, Tara Slough, Nico Ravanilla, Jacob N. Shapiro, Barbara Silva, Pedro C. L. Souza, Anna M. Wilke

Science, 2021

Abstract

Is it possible to reduce crime without exacerbating adversarial relationships between police and citizens? Community policing is a celebrated reform with that aim, 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.

Publication Pre-Print Supplementary PAP Replication Press: Science

Cite

@article{blair2021community,
title={Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South},
author={Blair, Graeme and Weinstein, Jeremy M and Christia, Fotini and Arias, Eric and Badran, Emile and Blair, Robert A and Cheema, Ali and Farooqui, Ahsan and Fetzer, Thiemo and Grossman, Guy and others},
journal={Science},
volume={374},
number={6571},
pages={eabd3446},
year={2021},
publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science}
}