Policies are powerful tools that reflect a department’s philosophy, culture, and ultimately affect an entire jurisdiction and agency. Because policies affect many stakeholders—including officers and communities—incorporating the voices of those impacted can help make policies more effective, improve the community’s perception of the law enforcement agency, foster internal and external procedural justice, and increase diversity within the agency. This blog highlights the benefits of and mechanisms for understanding different stakeholders while developing policies.

Promising Examples

St. Paul, Minnesota, PD, Police: Use of Force Policy
In 2018, the St. Paul, Minnesota, Police Department reached out to residents and community groups to request feedback on the department’s Use of Force policy—now called “Response to Resistance and Aggression.” The department held three public forums, more than a dozen community meetings, and received more than 100 online submissions from members of the community who provided feedback on the draft policy. 

Throughout the process, Chief Todd Axtell was forthright with residents when he noted that he may not accept all recommendations, but that he would give each suggestion earnest consideration. As a result of this more transparent community input process, the new policy emphasizes an officers duty to de-escalate and intervene if he/she witnesses another officer using unreasonable force, provides clearer guidance on the use of electronic control weapons, and identifies new ways officers should interact with people harming, or threatening to harm, themselves. “The only way to truly craft such a policy was to pull back the curtain and engage the people we serve in the process,” said Chief Axtell. 

He also noted that the St. Paul Police “discussed, debated, listened, and learned. Then we made decisions based on what we heard and what is in the best interest of our community and police officers. It was a robust and sometimes difficult process, but at the end of the day it resulted in a better policy for everyone.” While the agency could not accommodate every request, the organizations that participated recognized they had a genuine impact on the revised use of force policy.

Police Scotland: Organization and Strategies 
Police Scotland is one agency that is using Equality* Impact Assessments (EIAs) for analyzing and anticipating potential impacts of policies on different, particularly marginalized, communities and officers. Police Scotland uses their own version of EIAs to inform their internal personnel and their external enforcement and community engagement policies, called an Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment.

In 2012, the Scottish government required its public sector agencies to consider equality in their policies and practices. As a result, Police Scotland re-evaluated its strategic plan with a focus on mainstreaming equality and diversity in its personnel policies and practices, as well as its enforcement and community engagement. They took that one step further to also include human rights in their assessment tool. Thus, Police Scotland developed an “Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment” (EqHRIA).

When using an EIA, or an EqHRIA, a department might break down each policy by protected characteristics and then gather information to assess the potential impact of that policy or practice on both their communities and personnel. For Police Scotland, if they identify impacts that disproportionally affect a protected group of staff or within their communities, they provide a summary of mitigation actions.

As Police Scotland developed personnel policies and practices and engagement policies, they partnered with a range of internal and external stakeholders including statutory staff associations and diversity staff associations. According to the 2019 Equality & Diversity Mainstreaming & Outcomes Progress Report, groups such as the Scottish LGBTI Police Association; Disability and Carers Association; Scottish Women’s Development Forum; and the Christian Police Association helped Police Scotland increase understanding of officers’ communities, improve equality outcomes, and foster better community relations. As they draft the EqHRIAs for external enforcement policies, Police Scotland reach out to other stakeholders to gain deeper insight into the needs and cultures of various communities in Scotland.

EqHRIAs help ensure that internal policies address the various needs of the staff and communities which in return increases the diversity of officers, improves officer retention, and builds better community relations.

Considerations

If you would like to implement some of the processes or tools highlighted above, in order to understand and engage with different communities in your jurisdiction, below are some things for you to consider.

• Bring different voices into policy conversations. No one community is uniform, so listen to multiple perspectives within a community. 
• Make public meetings and feedback mechanisms accessible. Think about the needs of your individual community such as single working parents, deaf or hard-of-hearing residents, or other vulnerable populations. How might they find out about and access a meeting or what other ways can they offer feedback?
• As you create new processes, inform internal and external stakeholders about the value of community input and how that feedback will be reviewed and used to help mitigate any concerns. 
• Leverage existing or underused networks, such as tenant and civic associations, grassroot organizations, non-profit service providers, or religious leaders.
• Researchers may be able to help you evaluate policies, collect and analyze data, run pilot studies, or conduct cost-benefit analyses. Consider other job areas in addition to criminal justice like sociology, gender studies, public health, or even economics to help evaluate policies from different perspectives. 

Conclusion 

An agency’s policies affect officers, communities, and neighborhoods in different and potentially unforeseen ways. Not anticipating the potential effects, a policy may hamper trust and legitimacy between police and communities. While Police Scotland has specialized units and formal processes to evaluate and develop policies, such a comprehensive approach is not necessary to start using tools like EIAs. As the St. Paul, Minnesota, Police Department demonstrated, gathering input from and engaging in honest dialogue with different stakeholders, while a slow process and not a panacea, serves to improve department policies and foster police legitimacy. 

Resources

• Best Practices Guide: Developing a Police Department Policy-Procedure Manual 
• Practices in Modern Policing: Community Participation and Leadership 
• Recommendations on advisory boards
• Examples of community advisory boards
• Resistance and Aggression Policy by St. Paul, Minnesota Police Department
• 2019 Equality & Diversity Mainstreaming & Outcomes Progress Report

* In the United States, most organizations use the terms “Equity” and “Equity Impact Assessments.” However, Police Scotland uses “Equality.” While there are subtle differences between the two terms, this blog highlights the tool used by Police Scotland and therefore uses “equality”