Social Accountability and Institutional Change: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police

• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13055

Social Accountability and Institutional Change: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police 411

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 3, pp. 411–426. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13055.

Abstract: This article examines the ability of social accountability to spur gradual institutional change at the

municipal level, using the case of citizen oversight agencies (COAs) for police agencies. Using the gradual change

framework and the social accountability framework to guide the empirical strategy and data collected through an

original survey of COAs, the authors test the impact of COAs on institutional outcomes in policing. We find that,

in accordance with the gradual change framework, the degree to which a COA reduces racial disparity in policing

outcomes depends on its scope of authority and the degree of discretion afforded by existing institutions to police officers.

In general, the wider the scope of authority, and the broader the discretion afforded by existing institutions, the greater

the likelihood of change in institutional outcomes.

Evidence for Practice

• Investigative citizen oversight agencies (COAs), which conduct independent investigations into citizen

complaints and have the authority to recommend discipline to police officers found guilty of misconduct,

were found to be associated with a reduction in racial disparity in disorderly conduct arrest rates and a

reduction in racial disparity in police homicides of citizens.

• Monitoring COAs, which focus on trends in police misconduct and recommend changes in police policies,

procedures, and training, were found to be associated with a reduction in racial disparity in disorderly

conduct arrest rates.

• COAs that were led by a board of citizens appointed by the municipal district were found to be associated

with a reduction in racial disparity in disorderly conduct arrest rates.

• Since most impacts of COAs become more evident over time, such agencies likely require an ongoing

commitment from local governments, especially in terms of financial and human resources.

American policing is said to be suffering a

crisis of legitimacy. Since the August 9, 2014,

shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson,

Missouri, the public’s attention has been captured

by police brutality incidents, including numerous

instances involving police homicides of citizens. The

overrepresentation of black victims in such incidents

has led to calls for institutional reforms, including

demands such as ending broken windows policing

(see, e.g., ACLU 2016), appointing independent

prosecutors for cases involving police violence, ending

overpolicing of minority communities, racially

diversifying law enforcement agencies, revising use-

of- force policies (see President’s Task Force on 21st

Century Policing 2015), as well as fundamentally

rethinking the goals of policing (see Vitale 2017).

These calls have also included demands for creating

citizen oversight agencies (COAs), which are a type

of social accountability mechanism (President’s

Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2015). Social

accountability refers to “actions by civil society and

citizens to push officeholders to report on and answer

for their actions” (Brinkerhoff and Wetterberg 2016,

275). COAs are institutional arrangements by which

citizen complaints against police are reviewed at some

point by people who are not sworn officers (Walker

and Bumphus 1992). In this article, we examine

the effectiveness of COAs as a means of changing

institutional outcomes in policing—in this case,

racial disparities in arrest rates and homicides of

citizens by law enforcement officers—in the United

States. We do this by combining the gradual change

framework (Rocco and Thurston 2014) with the

social accountability framework (Fox 2015) to guide

our empirical strategy and model building.1

We take a historical-institutionalist perspective,

viewing institutions as political legacies of historical

struggles that persist over time because they help

maintain power imbalances favoring certain

actors in society. According to the gradual change

Mir Usman Ali

Maureen Pirog

Indiana University Bloomington

Social Accountability and Institutional Change:

The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police

Maureen Pirog is Rudy Professor

Emeritus of Policy Analysis in the School of

Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana

University Bloomington, and Distinguished

Visiting Professor in the Department of

Governance, University of Johannesburg,

South Africa. She is a national expert

in policy analysis with a focus on social

welfare programs and policies. She served

as editor in chief of the

Journal of Policy

Analysis and Management,

the top-ranked

policy analysis journal, from 2004 to 2014.

E-mail: pirog@indiana.edu

Mir Usman Ali received his PhD from

the School of Public and Environmental

Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington, in

2019. His research focuses on citizen-led

accountability, institutional change, and

the ways public managers shape social

equity outcomes in response to institutional,

organizational, and behavioral cues. He

holds a master’s degree in statistics from

Texas A&M University, has worked in

managerial roles in the public and private

sectors, and teaches policy analysis and

research methods.

E-mail: miruali@indiana.edu

Research Article

412 Public Administration Review • May | June 2019

framework, any set of rules or expectations, formal or informal, that

structure action will privilege certain actors over others in terms of

distributional consequences. We believe that this is plausible for

certain policing practices even if they are defined in ostensibly race-

neutral terms (e.g., “zero tolerance” policing and the use of stop,

question, and frisk tactics; see Eterno, Barrow, and Silverman 2017;

Fagan et al. 2010; Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss 2007; Weisburd and

Majmundar 2018).

As an antidote to the patterns of discrimination in policing,

COAs are agencies that are intended to enhance accountability

and transparency in policing and build community trust through

citizen oversight. In most police agencies in the United States,

when a citizen makes a formal complaint about a police officer,

that complaint is investigated and adjudicated by other sworn

officers. This internal investigation process is problematic because

it creates a conflict of interest that tilts, or can be perceived to tilt,

the accountability process in favor of the police. COAs attempt

to address this accountability deficit by opening insular, internal

police investigations to the scrutiny of citizens and/or professionals

who serve on the COA. In theory, COAs deter police misconduct

by performing functions such as reviewing findings made by the

police agency’s internal affairs division, assessing whether such

investigations were conducted in a thorough and fair manner, and

even conducting independent investigations and recommending

discipline and changes in police policies, if that authority is

granted. As citizen-oriented accountability bodies, COAs can create

incentives for police to take preemptive steps to limit misconduct,

for example, by increasing supervision of rookie officers, voluntarily

changing policies pertaining to the use of force, and reducing the

level of engagement with minorities for minor offenses.

Notwithstanding these implications, research on the impact of

COAs, and on social accountability mechanisms in general, is

relatively thin in the context of developed countries (for empirical

social accountability studies in the context of developing countries,

see Altman 2002; Brinkerhoff and Wetterberg 2016; Ma 2012;

Schatz 2013). Little is known about the difference made by stronger

COAs relative to those with limited authority in terms of impacting

police behavior, especially in the United States. Our study attempts

to fill that gap in the literature.

Given the substantial evidence of the racially disparate impact of

policing institutions (see, e.g., Alexander 2012; Epp, Maynard-

Moody, and Haider-Markel 2017; Kochel, Wilson, and Mastrofski

2011; Menifield, Shin, and Strother 2019; Nix et al. 2017; Vitale

2017; Ward and Rivera 2014), we believe it is incumbent on

scholars to evaluate strategies intended to make policing more

responsive to social equity concerns. The President’s Task Force

on 21st Century Policing echoed the necessity of such research,

urging “evidence-based practices to implement successful civilian

oversight mechanisms” (President’s Task Force on 21st Century

Policing 2015, 26). This article highlights the institutional and

organizational characteristics of COAs that are likely to be most

effective at reducing the racial disparities in the aforementioned

policing outcomes. Our findings should be of value to public

administrators such as city managers, mayors, and police chiefs who

are interested in strategies and organizational interventions intended

to make policing in their jurisdiction more racially equitable.

We believe that this is the first study to evaluate the impact of COAs

on racial disparities in policing outcomes. While we use the gradual

change framework and the social accountability framework to guide

our model building and empirical strategy, our goal is to test the

impact of different types of COAs on policing outcomes, not on

institutional change, although we believe that changes in policing

outcomes reflect changes in the institutions and rules governing

police behavior. In short, we are concerned with the impact of

social accountability mechanisms, such as COAs, on institutional

outcomes.

This article proceeds in seven sections: First, we review the findings

from COA research. In the second section, we describe how the

gradual change framework, combined with propositions from the

social accountability framework, can serve as a blueprint to predict

the impact of social accountability mechanisms. In the third section,

we propose hypotheses about the conditions under which COAs are

likely to lead to socially equitable outcomes in police enforcement

activities that involve different degrees of discretion. In the fourth

section, we introduce our empirical strategy and data set. In the

fifth section, we present the results from the estimated models. In

the sixth section, we discuss the results and the limitations of this

study, and in the seventh section, we draw conclusions about the

effectiveness of COAs and the efficacy of the GCF in explaining

changes in institutional outcomes.

Literature Review

COAs are government agencies, predominantly at the local level,2

that are intended to serve as a source of external oversight over

police agencies. Since 1969, when the first currently existing COA

was created in Kansas City, Missouri, the number of COAs in

the United States has gradually grown, with around 145 COAs

nationwide as of 2017 (for a discussion of the history of citizen

oversight in the United States, see Walker 2001, 2006).3 COAs in

the United States operate in a variety of political and socioeconomic

milieus and exhibit considerable variation in terms of their formal

authority, level of professionalization, staffing, budgetary authority,

and style of oversight. They are often created through a local

government ordinance or an amendment to the local government

charter (De Angelis, Rosenthal, and Buchner 2016).

The simplest COAs consist of a board of citizens that can

review the findings of investigations conducted by the police

agency’s internal affairs division. Such COAs often have little

or no budgetary authority, with the board of citizens serving on

a volunteer basis. More organizationally complex COAs may

include a paid full-time staff of lawyers, investigators, and policy

analysts that reports to the citizen board. Such COAs often have

substantial budgetary authority, the ability to conduct independent

investigations into citizen complaints, and access to police

evidence records and electronic databases. Based on our survey of

COAs, while board members in most COAs are appointed by the

mayor or city council, the methodology for the appointment of

board members (i.e., by the municipal district or at-large) often

varies across jurisdictions (De Angelis, Rosenthal, and Buchner

2016). Finally, prior research has postulated that COAs are likely

to be created after an officer- involved shooting or incidents

involving racially disparate policing (De Angelis, Rosenthal, and

Buchner 2016).