Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Academics have long argued that the use of procedural justice is a necessary component of effective policing; yet, there is scant evidence on how procedural justice can be implemented in a practical way and on whether training officers to “listen and explain with equity and dignity” (LEED) actually translates into quantifiable improvements in relevant field outcomes. This study conducts an experimental evaluation of a new training program aimed at promoting the use of procedural justice by officers in the Seattle Police Department (SPD).

A High Risk Circumstance (HRC) model was developed to identify officers working in areas with a higher risk of becoming involved in a potentially problematic event. Identified officers were assigned to either treatment or control. The treatment consisted of a non-disciplinary meeting with their supervisors where they were exposed to procedural justice and the principles of LEED in an interactive manner. The officers were subsequently compared to their control counterparts on four measures of overall activity including: a) total calls for service (CAD) responded to, b) percentage of CAD incidents initiated by the officer, c) minutes on scene, and d) whether or not a written report was filed. The officers were also compared on three measures of how they responded to incidents: a) percent of incidents resolved via an arrest (vs. citation, verbal warning, or rendering assistance), b) frequency of officer involvement in incidents involving force, and c) frequency of complaints filed against the officer.

Officers who participated in supervisory meetings appeared to engage in encounters with citizens with equal frequency as their colleagues. However, those who participated in the meetings were less likely to resolve an incident with an arrest one week after having a meeting when compared to their colleagues who did not participate. This effect is reasonably persistent, and the results suggest that officers who participated in the LEED debriefs were 12% less likely overall to resolve incidents via an arrest over the six-week period after the supervisory meetings. The results also suggest that, in the longer run, officers who participated in the meetings were almost 50% less likely to be involved in a use of force incident.

Overall, we did not find evidence that officers who had additional non-disciplinary supervisory meetings were any more or less likely to respond to, initiate, or document CAD incidents relative to their peers who worked in similar situations. We also found no substantive change in the amount of time officers were officially on-scene in a given incident. Furthermore, we did not find evidence that officers who participated in the meetings were less likely to garner complaints from the public.

We conclude that non-disciplinary LEED based supervisory meetings are a promising strategy for improving police legitimacy. Officers who had at least one meeting over a six-month period in which they reviewed how they approached relatively standard citizen encounters appeared to be less likely to engage in behaviors that, while central to policing, have the potential to reduce legitimacy when abused (e.g. making arrests and use of force).