Citizen Complaints as an Accountability Mechanism: Uncovering Patterns Using Topic Modeling

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221101119
• Author: Francisco Olivos,Patricio Saavedra,Lucia Dammert
• Date: 01 November 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Citizen Complaints

as an Accountability

Mechanism:

Uncovering Patterns

Using Topic Modeling

Francisco Olivos

1

,

Patricio Saavedra

2

,

and Lucia Dammert

3

Abstract

Objectives: Citizen complaints are considered by policing researchers as an

indicator of police misconduct, and a proxy of police-commun ity relations.

Nevertheless, US and EU-based studies tend to focus on sustained com-

plaints as reported by off‌icial agencies and off‌icer-based correlates. Using

the case of Carabineros, the Chilean militarized police force, this study

examines (a) latent topics contained in a large set of complaints against

the police on a digital platform, and (b) the change of those topics across

time and (c) by complainants’educational level. Methods: We use novel

computational natural language processing techniques to identify latent

themes across the corpus of complaints (N=1,623), hosted on an online

forum from 2013 to 2020. Results: Our f‌indings show eight latent themes

1

Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

2

Institute of Social Sciences, University of O’Higgins, Rancagua, Chile

3

Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile

Corresponding Author:

Francisco Olivos, 222 Dorothy Y L Wong Building, Department of Sociology and Social Policy,

Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong.

Email: franciscoolivosrave@ln.edu.hk.

Article

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(6) 740–780

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221101119

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

across the corpus. Among others, these themes were related to police

effectiveness, police misbehavior, and a master frame of institutional crisis

that has signif‌icantly grown over the last year. Additionally, differences in

the prevalence of topics by complainants’educational level were also

found. Conclusions: Our f‌indings contribute to the enterprise of opening

the black box of complaints against the police and highlighting oppor tunities

for social accountability in a developing country.

Keywords

Complaints, accountability, police, topic modeling, Chile

Introduction

In recent decades, the study of citizen complaints against the police has sub-

stantially contributed to understanding police misconduct and the relation-

ship between them and communities. The focus has been on the process

of f‌iling a complaint and in complaints as outcomes (Ariel, Farrar, and

Sutherland 2015; Cao and Huang 2000; Hedberg, Katz, and Choate 2017;

Pryor et al. 2019; Schuck and Rabe-Hemp 2016; Smith and Holmes

2003). In the complaints as outcomes approach, the literature leverages com-

plaints in two ways: f‌irst as a proxy of police-community relations, and

second, as a quantif‌iable indicator to measure the performance and impact

of different reforms. Although it provides relevant insights on the diagnosis

of citizens’satisfaction with the police force, the sole count of complaints

does not inform concrete courses of action to improve either the relation-

ships between police and citizens or the heterogeneities contained in those

complaints.

Policing researchers, particularly in developing countries, do not usually

have access to complaints’content (Dammert 2019; Frühling 2009a).

Therefore, the understanding of complaints heterogeneity has been

limited. However, digital media offers a f‌irsthand opportunity to directly

study citizen complaints and the relational meanings embedded in them.

We build on previous studies suggesting the heterogeneity of complaints

against the police (McLean 2019; Terrill and Ingram 2016; Torrible 2018)

to examine (a) latent topics contained in a large set of complaints against

the Chilean police on a digital platform, and (b) the change of those

topics across time and (c) by complainants’educational level. The latter is

particularly relevant considering the emphasis on the effect of off‌icer

Olivos et al. 741

characteristics and a glaring gap on understanding the relationship between

complaints and citizen-based features (Terrill and Ingram 2016).

The identif‌ication of the nature and content of complaints offers substan-

tial avenues for accountability. Traditional analyses of police governance

consider accountability as the overseeing of agencies or agents of the state

by other state agencies (O’Donnell 1998). However, in contrast to this hor-

izontal accountability, modern approaches also incorporate forms of social

accountability that rely upon civic engagement and are intended to comple-

ment and enhance conventional accountability mechanisms (Bonner 2009;

Malena, Forster, and Singh 2004; O’Donnell 1998). Civil society organiza-

tions or ordinary citizens play a direct or indirect role in improving public

institutions’accountability in social accountability. Following Peruzzotti

and Smulovits (2006), public citizen complaints against the police provide

another mechanism of social accountability by (1) shaming public off‌icials,

and potentially (2) activating horizontal accountability. Moreover, among

social accountability mechanisms, the literature on governance makes a

further distinction between vertical and diagonal accountability

(Lührmann, Marquardt, and Mechkova 2020). While the former is mediated

by elections and includes political parties, the latter incorporates non-state

actors, media, and civil society. Such mechanisms generate and amplify

the information about the government, holding it accountable. Therefore,

opening the “black box”of citizen complaints from a public complaints plat-

form could act as a form of diagonal accountability.

Utilizing the case of the Carabineros, the Chilean national militarized

police force, we supplement the efforts of policing researchers and police

agencies in applying computational methods to identify complaints patterns

(United Nations 2011). There are two main reasons why the Chilean case in

particular has the potential to improve understanding of citizen complaints

about their experience with the police. First, several corruption scandals

involving high-ranking off‌icers and serious human rights violations (e.g.,

United Nations, 2019) after the wave of protests in 2019 have negatively

affected Carabineros’public image to such an extent that some experts

have called for a major restructuring of the Chilean police force

(Comisión Independiente de Reforma Policial 2020). This social outburst,

and the underlying malaise, are not unique to the Chilean context and its

law enforcement. In the last decade, similar scenarios can be depicted

across the globe in diverse places such as Colombia, Ukraine, Hong

Kong, and in those countries involved in the Arab Spring. Hence, the under-

standing of police complaints in a context of social instability can illuminate

the relationship between the police and communities in other countries.

742 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(6)