How does technology-based monitoring affect street-level bureaucrats' behavior? An analysis of body-worn cameras and police actions

Body-worn cameras may produce varying effects on police behavior, depending on the agency-specific accountability context in which the technology adoption is embedded. The cameras may encourage coercive police actions when acquired to incentivize performance, such as by protecting officers from false complaints. By contrast, when acquired to enhance procedural accountability, such as by enabling closer scrutiny of officer misconduct, the cameras may discourage coercive police actions. Based on this framework, this study examined the case of the New Orleans Police Department, an agency that implemented a body-worn camera program to enhance both performance and procedural accountability. Results of Bayesian structural time-series modeling with synthetic control show that the program increased the number of investigatory stops and follow-up measures (i.e., frisk, search, citation, arrest) while decreasing the ratio of more-to-less coercive measures during stops (i.e., arrest/citation-to-warning ratio and search-to-frisk ratio). However, the program had a null effect on the minority-to-White suspect ratio, despite the agency's bias-free policing initiative. The percentage of frisks and searches detecting drugs or weapons also declined. A broader implication of the findings is that technology-based monitoring mechanisms are important, but not a silver bullet for improving the behavior of street-level bureaucrats.     

Stress and performance: Investigating relationship between occupational stress,career satisfaction,and job performance of police employees

The purpose of this research is to explore the impact of occupational stress on job performance of police employees. We theorized and tested the role of career satisfaction in the relationship between occupational stress and job performance as an underlying psychological mechanism. Primary data have been collected from 271 police employees working at AJ&K Pakistan. Results of this research study have shown that occupational stress is negatively related to career satisfaction, in‐role performance, and extra‐role performance of police employees. Moreover, career satisfaction mediates the relationships between occupational stress and in‐role and extra‐role performance of police employees. This research study has called researchers' and policy makers' attention towards an important issue of occupational stress in the police profession. The research will play an important role in compelling the top management, authorities, policy makers, and government officials of police to ponder over the issues of occupational stress aimed at enhancing the job performance including in‐role and extra‐role performance of police employees.     

Citizen oversight of independent police services: Bifurcated accountability,regulation creep,and lesson learning

By examining developments in England and Wales this article considers police reform in the context of the tension between operational independence and citizen oversight. The article assesses the nexus between regulation and accountability in order to shed light on how a bifurcated accountability paradigm has protected police autonomy. Particular significance is attached to the cold‐blooded police shooting of an innocent man as a critical moment in the recent history of police governance. The lesson‐learning strategy of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, created under the Police Reform Act 2002, is singled out as an important driver of police reform. Although police governance reform in England and Wales is context specific, it is held that appreciation of the regulation accountability nexus and complaints as lesson‐learning opportunities are of significance in other jurisdictions and sectors.     

Black and (thin) blue (line): Corruption and other political determinants of police killings in America

Police violence is not uncommon in America, and the risk of civilians' being killed by police is considerably higher here than in similar countries, making it a major public health issue. For Black Americans the risk is significantly higher. In this study, we analyze the political determinants of police killings of Black Americans, with a specific focus on corruption in American states. Our evidence suggests that police can kill Black Americans with impunity because of a lack of accountability—exemplified by corruption—that is largely determined by political influences. Our findings point to ways in which the responsibility for police violence and killings is deeply rooted and influenced by the values of the wider society.     

MANAGING AUSTRALIA'S POLICE: THE CHALLENGE TO IDENTIFY WHO SHOULD BE IN CHARGE—POLITICIANS OR POLICE?

Abstract: The management of police by government in Australia is a controversial but neglected topic, with little research or theoretical work having been undertaken. What is clear from the limited information available is that governments tend to adopt an arms-length policy and allow police to act with a greater degree of independence than they do with many other government agencies. What underpins this approach is the traditional British model for managing police. This model is considered in this paper, along with other matters such as local police statutes, discretion, statutory authority status and accountability. These aspects of the arms-length approach are discussed in the light of current policy-making and accountability systems. Consideration is also given to the question of whether this approach by government is still appropriate.     

Does school accountability lead to improved student performance?

The leading school reform policy in the United States revolves around strong accountability of schools with consequences for performance. The federal government's involvement through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reinforces the prior movement of many states toward policies based on measured student achievement. Analysis of state achievement growth as measured by the National Assessment of Educational progress shows that accountability systems introduced during the 1990s had a clear positive impact on student achievement. This single policy instrument did not, however, also lead to any narrowing in the Black‐White achievement gap (though it did narrow the Hispanic‐White achievement gap). Moreover, the Black‐White gap appears to have been adversely impacted over the decade by increasing minority concentrations in the schools. An additional issue surrounding stronger accountability has been a concern about unintended outcomes related to such things as higher exclusion rates from testing, increased dropout rates, and the like. Our analysis of special education placement rates, a frequently identified area of concern, does not show any responsiveness to the introduction of accountability systems.© 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Controlling bureaucracies in weak institutional contexts: The politics of police autonomy

This article argues that political competition determines how and when elected politicians can reduce police autonomy. While bureaucratic autonomy is generally lauded in developed democracies, it can result in serious malfeasance in contexts of institutional weakness. Political incumbents may reduce police autonomy through different means and for various purposes. While some politicians seek to professionalize police forces and align them with the rule of law, others aspire to politicize police to appropriate its rents from corruption. This article shows that lack of rotation in office (low political turnover) increases politicians' control of police, while under low turnover, fragmentation in cabinets and the legislature influences whether politicians seek to professionalize or politicize the force. The article illustrates this theory with a subnational comparison of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Santa Fe (Argentina), relying on 80 interviews with police and politicians.     

Turkish foreign policies determinants toward Palestinian issue under the rule of Justice and Development Party (2002–2015)

The study aimed at identifying the determinants, premises and the milestones of the Turkish Foreign Policy under the rule of the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP) toward the Palestinian issue. The study sought to unveil the basics and foundations of this new Turkish foreign policy, which the AKP depends on. The researcher investigated historically the Turkish foreign policy toward the Palestinian issue in the last era. It has established a kind of relative compatibility with the neighborhood and the world on many foreign policy issues, which all are characteristics that granted Turkey the possibility of establishing and implementing active and influential policies. The Palestinian issue with all its intricate and barbed nature is the best entrance of AKP Turkey to take a regional and international place. The Palestinian issue is considered the entrance of AKP Turkey to the “Islamic World.” At the end of the study, the researcher recommended that the Palestinian politicians benefit from the Turkish foreign policy under the rule of the AKP. It is through this policy that Turkey occupies a distinctive regional role through mediating between the disputing parties and exploits this role and its acceptance by the international community in supporting the Palestinian issue.     

Defining Policing Policies and the Political Agenda

Police officers influence the British policy process through their representative organizations. One of the main ways in which this is achieved is through police domination of the definition of certain sorts of issues at the central governmental level. This definition also occurs at the local level. Analysis of the location of the police as an interest group in the structure of the British state suggests how the politics of policing might be understood. Five issues relating to the police policies towards behaviour -street assaults, 'rural public disorder'. rape, battered women and racially motivated assaults - illustrate how the police define issues and affect the policy process. The debates about police 'politicization' and accountability should be set in the context of the relationship between political structure, issue definition and the political agenda.     

Restoring Ethnic Democracy: The Or Commission and Palestinian Citizenship in Israel

Israel's Palestinian citizens have historically enjoyed limited individual rights, but no collective rights. Their status as rights-bearing citizens was highlighted in 1967, with the imposition of Israel's military rule on the non-citizen Palestinians living in the occupied territories. It was the citizenship status of its Palestinian citizens that qualified Israel, a self-defined “Jewish and democratic state”, as an “ethnic democracy”. In October 2000 Israeli police killed 13 citizen Palestinians who participated in violent but unarmed demonstrations to protest the killing of non-citizen Palestinians in the occupied territories. Both the citizen Palestinian demonstrators and the police were engaged in acts of citizenship: the former were asserting their right as Israeli citizens to protest the actions of their government in the occupied territories, while the latter attempted to deny them that right and erase the difference between citizen and non-citizen Palestinians. Significantly, no Jewish demonstrator has ever been killed by police in Israel, no matter how violent his or her behavior. In November 2000 a commission of inquiry was appointed to investigate the killings. Its report, published in September 2003, is yet another act of citizenship: it seeks to restore the civil status of the citizen Palestinians to where it was before October 2000, that is, to the status of second-class citizens in an ethnic democracy. The Commission sought to achieve this end by undertaking a dual move: while relating the continuous violation of the Palestinians' citizenship rights by the state, it demanded that they adhere to their obligation to protest this violation within the narrow limits of the law. This article's key question is: could the Commission, by viewing the behavior of the Palestinian protestors as legitimate civil disobedience, have encouraged the evolution of Israel from an ethnic to a liberal democracy?     

The power of protest on policing: Black Lives Matter protest and civilian evaluation of the police

In 2020, police brutality against Black Americans catalyzed Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests across all 50 states. Though BLM protests continue to permeate society, few scholars explore how these protests change Americans' perceptions of the police. To investigate this phenomenon more meticulously, we administered an online survey experiment—oversampling Black American participants—to measure how protest culture, specifically BLM protests, influences civilians' perceptions of the police. Our survey found that (1) Black American participants have a lower evaluation of police performance, but a higher evaluation of the BLM Movement than White American participants; (2) the presence of a general protest negatively impacts peoples' perception of safety, police trustworthiness, and police performance; and (3) a BLM protest casts a stronger effect on White American participants than on Black American participants. Using Critical Race Theory and QuantCrit these findings suggest that the visibility of BLM protests changes both Black and White perceptions of the police to varying degrees.     

Social Accountability and Institutional Change: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police

This article examines the ability of social accountability to spur gradual institutional change at the municipal level, using the case of citizen oversight agencies (COAs) for police agencies. Using the gradual change framework and the social accountability framework to guide the empirical strategy and data collected through an original survey of COAs, the authors test the impact of COAs on institutional outcomes in policing. We find that, in accordance with the gradual change framework, the degree to which a COA reduces racial disparity in policing outcomes depends on its scope of authority and the degree of discretion afforded by existing institutions to police officers. In general, the wider the scope of authority, and the broader the discretion afforded by existing institutions, the greater the likelihood of change in institutional outcomes.     

Performance reporting for accountability purposes:: Lessons,issues, future

This article addresses the status and directions for performance reporting in the New Zealand public sector from the perspective of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). It outlines the role of the Audit Office, provides definitions of accountability, and projects the dimensions of a new accountability. The authors assess challenges to performance reporting and accountability, the history of reporting performance accountability in New Zealand, an Audit Office perspective on accountability to Parliament, lessons learned from reform, some issues outstanding, and future development in terms of how the public sector in New Zealand should improve reporting on non-financial performance.     

REINTERPRETING THE DEBATE ON AUTONOMY IN PUBLIC SERVICE SCIENCE*

Abstract: The report of the Science Task Force of the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration rekindled an old debate on autonomy versus accountability for government scientists. The rationale given there for allowing the natural science community great discretion in managing its own affairs while in receipt of very considerable public funds did not get much support in the debate. Unfortunately, the debate did little to illuminate the problems facing those charged with producing creative, but relevant research in public institutions. A more productive way of tackling the question of autonomy and accountability is to see whose interests are promoted by different stances on the issue. Some critics represent the quest for autonomy as simple power-seeking by professional elites. Yet the institutional setting for many supposedly autonomous scientists involved in successful innovation in industry often involves extensive interaction with non-scientists. User groups — such as the agricultural commodities research committees — influence scientists through a loosely coordinated network. In this situation a form of accountability exists, although it is not exerted through formal parliamentary mechanisms. The arrangements have some elements of corporatism. Autonomy is not prominent within this setting except elusively as a rationale used to blunt temporarily the impact of particular interest group demands that threaten the continuity required to realize investments in long-term research projects. In this case, autonomy is essentially a myth. However, to the extent that it allows scientific institutions to combine interaction in the practical world that their research must serve with some insulation from short-term political or interest group pressures, it may be valuable for successful research management. Science administrators sometimes regulate the research of their juniors quite closely, indicating that even individual “scientific autonomy” can be a very limited form of freedom. None the less, it can be managed in such a way as to allow creative talent to flourish within an accountable structure albeit one that departs from the conventional norms of responsible government.     

Effects of deregulation and performance on government accountability: Role of trust in Korea,Japan, and the United States

Public administration has been struggling to address the balance between conflicting government values. Trust in the study is employed as nodal value to reconcile modern management dilemma concerning conflicting relationships between performance and accountability and between discretion and accountability. Using 2012 International Social Survey Program data, this paper analyzed the moderator and mediator role of government trust among discretion, performance, and accountability in cases of South Korea, Japan, and the United States. This study used factor analysis and ordinary least square multiple regression analysis. The statistical results partially confirmed the hypotheses regarding the mediating and moderating role of trust: (a) the moderating effect of the trust on the relationship between performance and accountability in South Korea; (b) the moderating impact of the trust on the relationship between deregulation and accountability in Japan; and (c) when governments work well, it leads to high level of trust, in turn followed by high accountability in the United States and Japan.     

Gubernatorial elections and attitudes toward the police: State elections as focusing events

Traditional views hold that citizens’ attitudes toward the police are driven by local concerns. We contend that public attitudes toward the police are also responsive to systematic and periodic state-level political factors. We show that state elections as a focusing event alter periodically the determinants of attitudes toward the police. Using an ordered logistic regression model and data from national public policy surveys from 1998 and 1999, we find that gubernatorial elections have a significant effect on the state/police relationship. State elections create conditions that separate the bureaucratic and partisan functions of the state government. In turn, the bureaucratic performance of the state government is less related to police approval, while partisan contestation for control of the governor office (control of the state) is significantly and positively related to police approval. During gubernatorial election years, attitudes toward the state government account for more of the variation in police attitudes.     

Protest and property crime: political use of police resources and the deterrence of crime

This article investigates the claim that the political use of police resources promotes crime. Using a panel of South Korean metropolitan areas, we show that (1) the reallocation of police resources toward the control of political protests reduces arrest rates for crime and (2) the resulting reduction in criminal arrests significantly increases the incidence of crime. Overall, the impact of the reallocation of police resources works mainly through tradeoffs with arrest rates. Our findings imply that it is not the size of the police per se, but the allocation of police resources toward crime control that deters crime.     

DEADLY FORCE AS A POLICY PROBLEM IN LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT: DO ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

This article examines the impact of six administrative practices on the use of deadly force by police officers in American cities with a population greater than 50,000. Generally, departmental policies demonstrate little association with the frequency of shooting incidents per police officer, or in the number of incidents resulting in fatalities or injuries. It does appear that police departments which issue more traditional sidearms tend to experience fewer incidents than departments which issue heavier firearms. This same lack of association between administrative practices and the use of deadly force is discovered when controlling for city population size arid state legal codes. Notwithstanding that some of the relationships are in the expected direction, their lack of statistical significance suggests that the use of deadly force has its antecedents in sources other than the administrative policies of local police departments.     

The impact of compulsory voting on inequality and the quality of the vote

Abstract

Democratic elections imply that the electorate holds incumbents accountable for past performance, and that voters select the party that is closest to their own political preferences. Previous research shows that both elements require political sophistication. A number of countries throughout the world have a system of compulsory voting, and this legal obligation boosts levels of voter turnout. Under such rules, citizens with low levels of sophistication in particular are thought to turn out to vote in higher numbers. Is it the case that the quality of the vote is reduced when these less sophisticated voters are compelled to vote? This article investigates this claim by examining the effect of compulsory voting on accountability and proximity voting. The results show that compulsory voting reduces stratification based on knowledge and level of education, and proximity voting, but it does not have an effect on economic accountability. The article concludes with some suggestions on how systems of compulsory voting might mitigate the strength of political sophistication in determining the quality of the vote decision process.     

Can Performance Management Best Practices Help Reduce Crime?

As performance management systems gain popularity in police agencies, they are increasingly being criticized for their ineffectiveness at reducing crime and for encouraging abuse of authority. Scholars and practitioners, however, argue that these systems can be effective if they are implemented properly with the use of best practices. This article contributes to this debate by evaluating the impact of performance management systems and associated best practices on improving police performance. An analysis of primary survey data of 308 U.S. police agencies shows that performance management systems are effective tools in helping reduce crime across almost all crime categories. However, the best practices of performance reporting to citizens and providing discretion to officers have no significant impact on crime reduction, while consulting officers in the target‐setting process has a negative impact on police performance.