Building group capacity for problem solving and police–community partnerships through survey feedback and training: a randomized control trial within Chicago’s community policing program

Objectives

To examine whether group capacity for problem solving and partnership building could be enhanced at police–community meetings by providing the results from community surveys and training for group facilitators.

Methods

A randomized control trial was conducted in 51 police beats in Chicago’s community policing program, CAPS. Unlike control beats, results from web-based community surveys were provided at beat meetings in the feedback and training beats, with facilitators in training beats also receiving training and exercises to guide problem solving about survey results. Analysis included OLS and logistic regression of data from questionnaires administered to police and resident participants, as well as observations at beat meetings, which measured resident capacity, attitudes about the police–community partnership, and problem-solving activities.

Results

Support for hypothesized effects was found with greater resident confidence in their ability to achieve outcomes and solve local problems, as well as officers viewing their relationships with residents at beat meetings more favorably. Effects, however, were inconsistent and limited to the feedback group. While additional training and support provided in training beats indicated fuller engagement in problem solving, possible negative effects on attitudes were observed.

Conclusions

Failure to find more effects is discussed in terms of implementation and resistance. Officer resistance to and a shift in organizational priorities away from community policing worked against achieving full program implementation. The beat meeting context provided a traditional framework for police–resident interactions that precluded more comprehensive use of community data and possibly heightened dissatisfaction with the level of problem solving that occurred.     

Positive Effects in Detecting Lies from Training to Recognize Behavioral Anomalies

We examined whether training in both the verbal and nonverbal indicators of truth telling and lying would have positive effects on Law Enforcement Officers’ (LEOs) ability to evaluate truths from lies. College course-level training on empirically validated verbal and nonverbal indicators of truth telling and lying was provided to mid- to advanced-career level LEOs, whose accuracy in detecting lies from truths was assessed pre- and post-training using truthful and deceptive videos of mock crimes and opinions. A marginally significant truth bias existed at pre-test; training, however, resulted in a significant improvement in accuracy rates for both truth and lie videos, and the truth bias that existed at pre-test was eliminated. Additional analyses indicated that accuracy rates improved for videos of mock crimes but not for opinions. These findings add to a small but growing literature that indicates that training on validated verbal and nonverbal indicators of truth telling and lying has positive benefits.     

Evaluating the Effects of Repeated Psychological Injury: an Introduction to the Special Issue

Psychological Injury and Law -     

Back to the Future: The Pulling Apart of our Towns and Cities

Growing divisions between Britain’s towns and cities have created a dilemma for the Labour Party in seeking to represent very different parts of the country. There are some who argue that Labour must choose the global networked youth—who largely reside in cities—in order to maximise its electoral chances. This is an argument that defies electoral gravity and fails to address the root causes of the gulf between towns and cities. As jobs and investment have gone into cities, many towns have seen the local population age and local economies become unsustainable. In both towns and cities there is a clamour for power to move closer to home and for the renewal of democratic institutions, offering Labour the chance to win power and end the divisions that have come to characterise British politics.     

Collaborative Governance: Integrating Management,Politics, and Law

Scholars have engaged in an ongoing dialogue about the relationships among management, politics, and law in public administration. Collaborative governance presents new challenges to this dynamic. While scholars have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the design and practice of collaborative governance, others suggest that we lack theory for this emerging body of research. Law is often omitted as a variable. Scholarship generally does not explicitly include collaboration as a public value. This article addresses the dialogue on management, politics, and law with regard to collaborative governance. It provides an overview of the current legal framework for collaborative governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels of government and identifies gaps. The institutional analysis and development framework provides a body of theory that incorporates rules and law into research design. The article concludes that future research on collaborative governance should incorporate the legal framework as an important variable and collaboration as a public value.