The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens' Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial

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Web End = J Quant Criminol (2015) 31:509535

DOI 10.1007/s10940-014-9236-3

ORIGINAL PAPER

Barak Ariel William A. Farrar Alex Sutherland

Published online: 19 November 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract

Objective Police use-of-force continues to be a major source of international concern, inviting interest from academics and practitioners alike. Whether justied or unnecessary/ excessive, the exercise of power by the police can potentially tarnish their relationship with the community. Police misconduct can translate into complaints against the police, which carry large economic and social costs. The question we try to answer is: do body-worn-cameras reduce the prevalence of use-of-force and/or citizens complaints against the police?

Methods We empirically tested the use of body-worn-cameras by measuring the effect of videotaping policepublic encounters on incidents of police use-of-force and

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10940-014-9236-3

Web End =10.1007/s10940-014-9236-3 ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

B. Ariel

Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel

B. Ariel (&)

Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

W. A. Farrar

Rialto Police Department, Rialto, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

W. A. Farrar

Cantab, Police Executive Programme, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

A. Sutherland

RAND Europe, Westbrook Centre, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1YG, UK e-mail: [email protected]

A. Sutherland

Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

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510 J Quant Criminol (2015) 31:509535

complaints, in randomized-controlled settings. Over 12 months, we randomly-assigned ofcers to experimental-shifts during which they were equipped with body-worn HD cameras that recorded all contacts with the public and to control-shifts without the cameras (n = 988). We nominally dened use-of-force, both unnecessary/excessive and reasonable, as a non-desirable response in policepublic encounters. We estimate the causal effect of the use of body-worn-videos on the two outcome variables using both between-group differences using a Poisson regression model as well as before-after estimates using...