Even the ancient Romans were concerned about accountability and oversight. Nearly 2,000 years ago the Roman satirist Juvenal asked, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”—which can be translated from Latin as “Who will watch the watchers?”
This question and more have been answered by a recent report that examines the evolution and growth of the field of civilian oversight of law enforcement as well as strategies for effectiveness and sustainability—Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement: Report on the State of the Field and Effective Practices, from the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE). This research, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice Office for Community Oriented Policing Services, provides important background and analysis of the field of oversight, 13 principles for effective oversight, and 9 case studies of civilian oversight agencies in the United States. The report also describes the common models of oversight, recommendations for training and standards, and the ways that oversight benefits communities.
Civilian oversight of law enforcement can contribute significantly to the implementation and institutionalization of many of the recommendations that are focused on mending the relationships between law enforcement and communities and can further the development of public trust, legitimacy, cooperation, and collaboration necessary to improve police-community relations and enhance public safety.
How Did We Get Here?
Everyone has seen the viral videos of police encounters with members of the public who have committed minor legal infractions, inexplicably ending in tragedy that sends shockwaves through communities and law enforcement agencies. Since the Civil Rights era, there has been a conversation about the relationship communities have with their law enforcement in the context of reduced public confidence in U.S policing, particularly among youth and people of color. 1 There have also been widespread calls for external oversight of law enforcement, especially regarding issues such as officer-involved shootings and excessive force, discriminatory policing, aggressive crime-fighting strategies, and accountability for misconduct.
The response by governments, law enforcement executives, community groups, and technical advisors to the challenge of mending community-police relations has been significant. Across the United States, law enforcement leaders, academics, and government officials have seemingly reached a consensus that addressing such issues with a focus on public trust and legitimacy is integral to fair and effective public safety in an increasingly diverse nation. The Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing also offered several recommendations related to public trust, procedural justice, and legitimacy; accountability and transparency; community policing efforts; and the inclusion of community members in policy development, training programs, and the review of force incidents.2 In addition, the task force’s report recommended that civilian oversight of law enforcement be established in accordance with the needs of the community and with input from local law enforcement stakeholders.3
What Is Civilian Oversight?
Civilian oversight is broadly defined as the independent, external, and ongoing review of a law enforcement agency and its operations by individuals outside of that agency. While there are various models and structures, civilian oversight of law enforcement includes one or more of the following characteristics: the review of internal misconduct investigations; the independent investigation of complaints alleging officer misconduct; auditing or monitoring various aspects of the law enforcement agency’s work; analyzing patterns or trends; issuing public reports; and making recommendations on discipline, training, policies, and procedures. These functions promote greater law enforcement accountability, increased transparency, positive organizational change, and improved responsiveness to community needs and concerns.
By acting as an independent and neutral entity reviewing the work of a law enforcement agency and its sworn staff, a civilian oversight agency offers a unique type of legitimacy, as compared to internal accountability and review mechanisms. Similarly, civilian oversight’s impartiality, neutrality, and adherence to findings of fact can help to mitigate officer skepticism in internal systems and bolster procedural fairness within the law enforcement agency.
While the establishment of civilian oversight alone cannot ensure law enforcement’s legitimacy in a given community, it is increasingly difficult to maintain the public’s trust without it. Therefore, developing effective, sufficiently resourced, and independent civilian oversight is an important strategy for supporting, enhancing, or rebuilding community relations with law enforcement.
History of Civilian Oversight
For most of its history, civilian oversight has been created in response to high-profile incidents or scandals and has focused on reacting to concerns, complaints, or systemic issues. Although “reactive oversight” is a necessary component of the work, it can be perceived by law enforcement as adversarial, legalistic, and based on accountability for misconduct and deterrence. More recently, however, civilian oversight has more often been established in an effort to enhance community-police relationships and provide insight on police policies and training. “Proactive oversight” addresses problems by identifying underlying issues, focusing on organizational change, and concentrating on the reduction and prevention of the causes of misconduct or negative interactions between community members and law enforcement that can lead to complaints, distrust, and failure to utilize or even engage with public safety services. In addition, proactive oversight sees part of its work as building partnerships with law enforcement and creating bridges between law enforcement and the broader community.
Despite more than 50 years of development, professionalization, training, and positive impact, numerous misconceptions about civilian oversight still exist, many going back decades. Historically, there has been limited empirical research and analysis conducted by academia regarding the effectiveness of civilian oversight. The Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing states that “civilian oversight of law enforcement is important in order to strengthen trust with the community” and that there are important reasons to implement it despite the dearth of research on oversight’s impact on policing and legitimacy.4
To further develop effective and sustainable civilian oversight throughout the United States, NACOLE’s report looks to provide comprehensive guidance to oversight practitioners, law enforcement, community organizations, and local officials. The project included site visits and conversations with a range of stakeholders— police executives, union leadership, elected officials, oversight staff and board members, and community members with an interest in issues of policing and law enforcement. These visits resulted in nine case studies of cities with civilian oversight, ranging from Los Angeles, California, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, which, combined with the previous research, allowed for the delineation of the principles for effective oversight.
The Benefits of Oversight
Even in its most basic forms, civilian oversight benefits the broader community by supporting effective and constitutional policing while building bridges between law enforcement and the public. However, effective and well-supported oversight mechanisms can also provide constructive feedback on police policies and practices to law enforcement and government officials. Oversight also increases public confidence and trust in the police by helping the broader community gain a greater understanding of why certain policies, procedures, and practices exist and how they are implemented.
Civilian oversight promotes the idea that both the public and the police have a voice. When the public is able to file a report with an independent, non-sworn oversight professional rather than a uniformed officer, they are more likely to trust that the results will be fair and feel they have been heard. Oversight can also enhance the credibility of the law enforcement agency and its disciplinary process with the officers. When an oversight agency finds no misconduct, the officer knows that non-sworn individuals found his or her actions complied with policy and procedure. In addition, when an oversight agency supports the conclusions of the internal affairs unit, it demonstrates the validity of the internal review and disciplinary processes to all involved parties.
Civilian oversight also provides internal benefits to the law enforcement agency and its officers. Internally, civilian oversight improves the quality and integrity of investigations and increases transparency while improving the agency’s overall performance in the eyes of the community. Externally, civilian oversight provides a forum for the public to raise concerns, while enhancing the credibility of the law enforcement agency and its guiding policies publicly. With increased trust, community members become more comfortable reporting crimes and working with their local law enforcement agency.
These benefits support the goals of community-oriented policing and its problem-solving techniques, including cooperative efforts with the broader community to proactively address concerns. They also highlight the shared responsibility between the oversight agency and the law enforcement agency to promote transparency and accountability.
13 Principles for Effective Oversight
The 13 principles for effective oversight build upon the research findings of the Report. They reflect information gleaned from scholars and oversight professionals who have identified the important aspects of effective civilian oversight.5
In many ways, these principles are interrelated, and an oversight agency must be thoughtful when deciding to emphasize one principle while de-emphasizing another. Building effective oversight requires balancing and prioritizing these principles, based on what community stakeholders determine to be most important for the population the agency serves. The general concepts behind some of those principles can be summarized as follows.
Independence and Adequate Resources
One of the defining concepts of civilian oversight is independence, meaning an absence of real or perceived influence from law enforcement, political actors, advocates, and other special interests. An oversight agency must maintain and demonstrate its independence in all of its work—even in the face of high-profile events. In addition, there must be a sustained commitment to provide oversight with all necessary resources, including a budget that provides adequate staffing, training, outreach, and reporting.
Unfettered Access, Public Reporting, and Transparency
Timely access to all relevant records for reviews, investigations, or other matters within the scope of an oversight agency’s purview is essential to providing effective, informed, and fact-driven oversight. Similarly, those agencies performing oversight of jails and prisons must have unfettered access to facilities and staff. Civilian oversight provides a structured way (within a specific legal framework of public records and collective bargaining) for the public to learn about concerns and complaints, as well as policies, procedures, training, and other information about the work of the law enforcement agency. In addition, regular reporting to the public is crucial, and reports should make clear the oversight agency’s authority, purpose, procedures, and accomplishments, including patterns and trends in complaints or discipline, and highlight recommendations, outreach activities, and any issues that may be of concern to the public.
Community Outreach and Input
Outreach is vital for an oversight agency to ensure community members know that it exists and to be able to solicit community input and involvement. It also plays an important role in building stakeholder relationships, facilitating learning, sharing reports and findings, and developing a greater capacity for problem-solving. Incorporating community stakeholder input regarding how civilian oversight does and should function—and which accountability issues it should address—will result in the creation of an oversight system that addresses the community’s needs and expectations within the specific local context.
Procedural Justice and Legitimacy
Procedural justice and legitimacy are core principles guiding the work and processes of effective civilian oversight. Because procedural justice typically focuses on how people feel authority is exercised, the recognition of that authority and the perception of how fairly that authority is exercised are crucial components of legitimacy. Procedurally just interactions between law enforcement and the community positively impact the public’s perception of law enforcement and affects their willingness to assist with activities such as crime control efforts. A procedurally just complaint process, where both complainants and officers report being satisfied with the quality of communications and the fairness of the process , increases complainant satisfaction and trust in the process.
Effective Practices vs. Best Practices
Stakeholders frequently seek information on practices proven to work, methods to strengthen or improve civilian oversight, and ways that desired outcomes can be achieved most effectively and efficiently. In the field of civilian oversight, however, there are important limitations to consider regarding the appropriateness and applicability of what are commonly understood as “best practice” approaches. Each oversight entity is established under applicable state and local law, contracts, and the needs of each community and should include a close examination of whether specific practices are a good fit for a community. They must also consider the possible unintended consequences of implementing a particular policy, practice, or procedure. Social and political contexts vary widely and make it difficult to identify a successful practice in one jurisdiction and apply it to another. The lack of standardized definitions for the types of data being collected and analyzed in different jurisdictions makes cross-jurisdictional comparisons limited in their usefulness. Therefore, NACOLE proposes an “effective practices” framework that takes into consideration the set of core values and the 13 principles that are the foundation for successful and effective oversight.
These effective practices value the diverse perspectives and wisdom of experienced practitioners while acknowledging that, within the field of civilian oversight, there are several possible paths to success. Furthermore, they are consistent with the “best fit” approach to structuring civilian oversight and prioritizing all stakeholder input and dialogue, rather than merely prescribing the “best” in all contexts.
As a whole, NACOLE’s recent research initiative is an important part of its work to support, improve, and expand civilian oversight of law enforcement throughout the United States. Additional research, guidance, and understanding will be necessary as policing and the field of oversight continue to grow and evolve.
Notes:
1Jeffrey Jones, “In U.S., Confidence in Police Lowest in 22 Years,” Gallup, June 19, 2015; Jim Norman, “Confidence in Police Back at Historical Average,” Gallup, July 10, 2017.
2President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (Washington, DC: COPS Office, 2015), 1.
3President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report, 26.
4President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report, 26.
5Douglas Perez, Common Sense About Police Review (Philadelphia, PA; Temple University Press, 1995); Samuel Walker, Police Accountability: The Role of Citizen Oversight (San Francisco, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2000); Samuel Walker, Core Principles for an Effective Police Auditor’s Office (Omaha, NE: University of Nebraska, 2003); Merrick Bobb, “Civilian Oversight of Police in the United States,” Saint Louis University Public Law Review 22, no. 1 (2003): 151–166; Barbara Attard and Kathryn Olson, “Overview of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement in the United States”; Kevin King, “Effectively Implementing Civilian Oversight Boards to Ensure Police Accountability and Strengthen Police-Community Relations,” Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal 12, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 91–119; Joseph De Angelis, Richard Rosenthal, and Brian Buchner, Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement: Assessing the Evidence (OJP Diagnostic Center, NACOLE, 2016).
Please cite as
Brian Corr and Cameron McEllhiney, “Who Will Watch the Watchers? Civilian Oversight in the 21st Century,” Police Chief Online, August 25, 2021.
