Five Years after Ferguson: Reflecting on Police Reform and What’s Ahead
Date | 01 January 2020 |
Author | Laurie O. Robinson |
DOI | 10.1177/0002716219887372 |
Published date | 01 January 2020 |
Subject Matter | Afterword: A Policy-Maker’s View |
228 ANNALS, AAPSS, 687, January 2020
DOI: 10.1177/0002716219887372
Five Years after
Ferguson:
Reflecting on
Police Reform
and What’s
Ahead
By
LAURIE O. ROBINSON
887372ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYFIVE YEARS AFTER FERGUSON
research-article2019
Policing in the United States is not the same profession
it was before Michael Brown’s death on a street in
Ferguson, Missouri, five years ago. Police use of lethal
force has become central to the debate triggered by
Ferguson. In this article, I review steps taken to imple-
ment policing reforms at local, state, and federal lev-
els; note obstacles to reform; and speculate about
which proposals advanced by authors in this volume
might be implemented by policy-makers at different
levels of government. I conclude by suggesting four
areas where attention is needed if reform measures are
going to be successfully institutionalized, and I com-
ment on current bipartisan attention in Washington to
criminal justice that offers the potential for federal
action.
Keywords: police reform; lethal force; federal, state,
and local government
It is now five years since Michael Brown’s
death and since a White House Task Force
set up in the aftermath of Ferguson issued its
recommendations for twenty-first-century
policing (President’s Task Force on 21st
Century Policing 2015). Over those five years,
as the preceding articles in this volume make
clear, incidents involving police use of lethal
force have been at the center of a reshaped
landscape in which law enforcement now oper-
ates in this country.
As one observer has described it, “However
glacial the pace of change, law enforcement is
not the same profession it was five years ago”
Laurie O. Robinson is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor
of Criminology, Law & Society at George Mason
University. In 2014–15, she cochaired the President’s
Task Force on 21st Century Policing; and for 10 years,
in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, she
served as the presidentially appointed assistant attorney
general heading the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
Office of Justice Programs, DOJ’s research and grants
agency.
Correspondence: lrobin17@gmu.edu
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