Report: increases in police use of force in the presence of body-worn cameras are driven by officer discretion: a protocol-based subgroup analysis of ten randomized experiments

By Barak Ariel, Alex Sutherland, Darren Henstock, Josh Young, P. Drover, Jayne Sykes, Simon Megicks, Ryan Henderson. 2016

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ObjectivesOur multisite randomized controlled trial reported that police body-worn cameras (BWCs) had, on average, no effect on recorded incidents of police use of force. In some sites, rates of use of force decreased and in others increased. We wanted to understand these counter-intuitive findings and report pre-specified subgroup analyses related to officers’ discretion on activating the BWCs.MethodsUsing pre-established criteria for experimental protocol breakdown in terms of treatment integrity, ten experimental sites were subgrouped into “high-compliance” (no officer discretion applied to when and where BWCs should be used; n = 3), “no-compliance” (treatment integrity failure in both treatment and control conditions; n = 4), and tests where officers applied discretion during treatment group but followed protocol in control conditions only (n = 4).ResultsWhen officers complied with the experimental protocol and did not use discretion, use of force rates were 37 % lower [SMD = (−.346); SE = .137; 95 % CI (−.614) – (−.077)]; when officers did not comply with treatment protocol (i.e., officers chose when to turn cameras on/off), use of force rates were 71 % higher [SMD = .392; SE = .130; 95 % CI (.136) – (.647)], compared to control conditions. When full discretion (i.e., overall breakdown of protocol) was applied to both treatment and control conditions, null effects were registered [SMD = .009; SE=.070; 95 % CI (−.127) – (.146)], compared to control conditions.ConclusionsBWCs can reduce police use of force when then officers’ discretion to turn cameras on or off is minimized—in terms of both case types as well as individual incidents. BWCs ought to be switched on and the recording announced to suspects at early stages of police–public interactions. Future BWCs tests should pay close attention to adherence to experimental protocols.

Subfields: Health, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3c9367190fa12ddf2c9b7a86982d58c48e9d18aa

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Citations in the corpus

Community Perceptions of Police Body-Worn Cameras (2017, background): “The following year, Ariel et al. (2016) assessed whether BwCs could deter police from using force and/or deter suspects from instigating forceful encounters.”
The Deterrence Spectrum: Explaining Why Police Body-Worn Cameras ‘Work’ or ‘Backfire’ in Aggressive Police–Public Encounters (2018, methodology): “…behaving in a non-compliant way are ‘sufficiently high’—and the operative ingredient is the actor’s perception—then the non-compliant behaviour is expressly less likely to be preferred (see the review on these ‘sanction threats’ in Ariel et al., 2016, as well as in Ariel and Partridge, 2016).”
Police Body-Worn Cameras: Effects on Officers’ Burnout and Perceived Organizational Support (2018, methodology): “, 2017), or varying implementation across sites (Ariel et al., 2016b).”