Policing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploratory Study of the Types of Organizational Changes and Police Activities Across the Globe

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Peter Neyroud,Sanja Kutnjak Ivković,Jon Maskály
• DOI: 10.1177/10575677211012807
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Additional Articles on Police

Additional Article on Police

Policing the COVID-19

Pandemic: Exploratory Study

of the Types of Organizational

Changes and Police Activities

Across the Globe

Jon Mask´

aly

1

, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic

´

2

,

and Peter Neyroud

3

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic upended major facets of global society, including policing. This study

describes three types of changes that police agencies in counties worldwide made. First, how have

various domains of policing changed and how much did they change? Second, were these changes

regulated by the official policy? Third, what are the potential consequences of the changes made

during the pandemic? Taking a mixed-methods approach, our quantitative survey data from

27 countries, buttressed by qualitative responses, enable us to examine changes in these three areas.

Our results suggest there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the degree of change, the use of policy to

make the changes, and the perceived effects of the changes. Some changes (i.e., the use of personal

protective equipment) are relatively ubiquitous and common sense based on the pandemic. Other

organizational changes show a great deal more variation, especially when considering the valence of

the change. Finally, the police executives from these countries express a highly optimistic—and

potentially overly rosy—view of the potential longer term consequences of the pandemic or the

operational changes made because of it. Overall, the results paint a more complicated picture of the

responses to the pandemic made by the police organizations included in our sample. We conclude

by discussing the implications of these findings for future research, police practice, and the devel-

opment of policy.

Keywords

police organizations, COVID-19 pandemic, comparative policing

1

University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA

2

Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

3

Cambridge University, United Kingdom

Corresponding Author:

Jon Mask´

aly, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202, USA.

Email: jonathan.maskaly@und.edu

International CriminalJustice Review

2021, Vol. 31(3) 266-285

ª2021 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10575677211012807

journals.sagepub.com/home/icj

By early March 2020, the COVID-19 virus had spread across the world and the World Health

Organization (2020) declared a pandemic, calling for countries “ ...to take urgent and aggressive

action.” By late April, worldwide nearly 3 million people tested positive for COVID-19, more than

200,000 people had died (Worldometers, 2020), and about one third of the world’s population was in

varying forms of lockdown to minimize the spread of the virus (Bucholz, 2020; Warran et al., 2020).

As Roche’s (2020) analysis of the European governments’ decisions during the first wave of pan-

demic in spring of 2020 suggests, these decisions may not be correlated with the intensity of the

pandemic, but, rather, with the political culture and the extent of the rule of law.

As governments restricted social life, the police performed the role of first responders in addition

to being expected to enforce the new safety measures. While police frequently assist in emergency

situations (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), policing during the COVID-19 pandemic is different. Cave

and Dahir (2020) argue that this has been a difficult time for governments trying to determine what

the police should do and citizens trying to determine what is expected by changing regulations. Due

to the lack of clarity guiding policing of the pandemic (Farrow, 2020; Jennings & Perez, 2020; White

& Fradella, 2020), there have been documented instances in which the police have made contro-

versial decisions about enforcing pandemic specific policies (Cave & Dahir, 2020). Obtaining

instrumental compliance through fear of punishment challenges the notion of consent-based policing

and could result in the erosion of police legitimacy. On the other hand, securing normative com-

pliance from citizens who evaluate the COVID-19 governmental decisions as appropriate and police

enforcement decisions as fair, both in terms of procedures and outcomes, could enhance the legiti-

macy of the police (e.g., Stott et al., 2020). In other words, the police were proverbially put between

a rock and a hard place even more so than normal by the pandemic.

It remains unclear how the police have responded to this evolving situation. Although the

COVID-19 pandemic affected police organizations around the world, these organizations operated

in differing social landscapes. This begs the question, were police organizational changes similar

across the world? This study seeks to provide a global perspective on police organizations’ responses

and changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the changes in both internal

operations and demand for police services by looking specifically at proactive and reactive strate-

gies. This study also examines whether these c hanges were made by agency policy/procedure.

Finally, we examine the potential consequences—for the organization and the community—of the

changes made in response to the pandemic.

Literature Review

Changes in the Demand for Police Services

Many governments implemented social distancing and social isolation in response to the pan-

demic, which transformed citizens’ social life (Devlin & Cornibert, 2020; Listening Project, 2020).

These drastic changes in social patterns likely changed the demand for police services (i.e., calls for

police service). A survey of U.S. and Canadian police administrators from about 1,000 police

agencies found that police administrators in most agencies (57%) reported declines in calls for

service (CFS) in their commun ities early in the pandemic—some (14%) experienced dramatic

reductions (i.e., >50%; Lum et al, 2020). However, it is unclear whether this decrease was consistent

across CFS types. Subsequent research examining CFS yielded mixed results, both across types of

CFS and between jurisdictions (Baier, 2020).

To our knowledge, Ashby’s (2020) study of CFS in the 10 largest U.S. police agencies is the most

comprehensive study of the influence of COVID-19 on CFS to date. The results show CFS was

significantly reduced compared to the forecast distribution of CFS for 18 common call types in six of

the 10 largest U.S. cities. An in-depth exploration across different call types revealed substantial

Mask´

aly et al. 267