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Rethinking police reforms

For the police, reform is in many ways the “nature of the beast”. In many countries, police reform is an ongoing process. This normalcy of police reform is important to remember when trying to understand or support such processes or when trying to promote COP. In most counties there are recent or on-going initiatives to improve or reform parts of the police. This includes efforts to promote Community Oriented Policing. Therefore, in order to implement COP, we have to understand police reform processes.  

Too often, police reform is misunderstood as neutral and purely technical in character. In practice, however, it is a highly political endeavor. Read more here. Reform is about changing the way things are done. Different reforms affect different people in different ways. Some people may gain from the process, while others will lose long-held privileges. Inconsistencies between intentions and results are thus both natural and inevitable, and there will always be a level interpretation and modification as various actors translate polices and plans into practical implementation. A level of resistance or foot-dragging is also common. Local resistance and questions about the legitimacy of reforms may be triggered by lack of local ownership to the reform.

While national police reform processes are the norm, post-conflict police reforms are often assisted by international agencies. Over the past decades, various international agencies have executed programs to assist police reforms in post-conflict areas as part of an effort to enhance international peace and security. These efforts are increasingly integrated into broader international conflict resolution and peace building operations, including the promotion of liberal democracy, market-based economic reforms, and the formation of institutions associated with modern states.

We distinguish here between two main approaches to police reform:

  • Technical approach

    Technical support is needed after conflicts where the police often lack basic resources, such as intact stations, office equipment, vehicles, trained staff, and finances to pay salaries and fuel. Many police reforms thus focus on the technical aspects of reforms; on providing material resources and infrastructure, (re-)establishing and restructuring rule of law institutions and training in standard operations and response.

    These investments are important, as resource scarcity can lead to strategies that could be defined as “petty corruption”. For example, insufficient resources may lead to the introduction of a “user-pays principle”, where police service is dependent upon the public’s ability to provide direct payment. It may also lead to police dependency upon other actors, for instance having to rely on borrowing vehicles from other organizations to travel to a crime scene. Technical support is thus crucial toward improving police efficiency and equal police service provision.

    Technical support can also aid community policing processes, for example the decentralization of the police to allow more contact with communities. This may also include infrastructural improvements of police stations facilitate access for vulnerable groups. In police stations across Pakistan, for example, women desks have been set up where women police are attending women related issues. These desks are meant to encourage women to report crime and provide a more accurate picture of violence against women.

    While these technical approaches may be important to reform, they are limited in their capacity to promote COP. Successful implementation of COP requires an emphasis on improving how police relate to local communities. Read more in the social approach section below.

  • Social approach

    A meaningful implementation of COP depends on the availability of appropriate social resources within the police; resources that enable the police to form trust-based relations, networks and mutual agreements with a different type of groups in society. A social approach to police reforms deals with how the police relate to local communities. It often implies moving from a police force (focused on securing the state) to a police service (focused on serving the community). This can include training of police officers and leaders in context-sensitive approaches, citizen involvement, partnership building, joint problem identification and solving, as well as preventive policing.

    Taking a social approach means addressing power relations between the police and local communities, as well as the existing security narratives that render the violence experienced by certain groups in society invisible. Our Digital Story from El Salvador demonstrates how dominant national security narratives excessively focus on prosecuting criminal gangs, giving no space for frequently ignored security problems such as gender-based violence (GBV). As a result, femicides are not counted in official murder statistics.

    A tale of invisibility (El Salvador) - Narrated by Erika Rojas

    Adopting a social approach to police reforms also means addressing the ways in which things are done within the police – including the norms, routines, procedures and power relations that shape police operations on a daily basis. It also has implications for who is selected for police training, in terms of their attitudes, values and norms. This includes the ways gender norms and relations influence the situation of policewomen, as well as police officers from other minority groups. You may read more about the situation for women in the police here.

    As police models and cultures are conditioned and shaped by history, police reforms should also address the historical favoring of certain groups in society (as a consequence of conflict and/or colonial history), including existing links between the police and a political elite. These power relations are challenging, but not impossible to address. A Digital Story demonstrates a promising practice where the Inspector General (IG) in Kenya challenges a reactive and authoritarian policing approach – a legacy of the colonial era. By investing time in visiting and facilitating internal discussions with local police across the country, the IG was able to ensure buy-in from large groups of officers for his vision of a more “people-centered approach” to policing.

    People-centred policing (Kenya) - Narrated by Douglas Brand.

    In another promising practice from Kenya, a local police leader served as a role model to lead, support and inspire his team to practice a more people-centred approach to policing.