Collaborative Research: Variables Influencing the Efficacy of Civilian Oversight Commissions

针对目前围绕警务的冲突，地方和国家组织及决策者呼吁加强对警察部门的文职监督和监督，作为改善警察与社区关系的一种办法。文职监督委员会是在当地设立的，因此难以在更广泛的范围内有效评估这些委员会的影响。该项目以美国三个县为中心，旨在探讨：是什么因素影响了当地的监督实践，我们可以从这些不同的实体中学到什么，这些实体可以用来有效评估不同委员会的成果？本项目选择具有独特种族动态和不同结构的民事警察监督委员会，重点研究民事监督的不同历史、形式、实践和成败。调查人员和学生研究人员分析了话语和实践中的变化，以了解民事监督警察的具体实施情况，并在更广泛的范围内衡量民事监督委员会的潜在价值。该项目将培养研究生和本科生的定量和定性数据收集和分析能力。该项目采用以团队为基础的多站点人种学，研究和分析监督委员会在当地的具体特点，包括其制度结构、历史和制度动态。本项目发展方法，对监督委员会的运作方式提供比较的见解，特别注意可预测参与情况的人口变数。通过追踪监督委员会所涉及的问题，研究人员将发展出委员会处理社区关系和维持治安的形式的理论。仅仅建立民事监督可能是迈向公共民主论坛的第一步，但本研究探讨了民事监督委员会作为一个机构，可以调查可能的问责制和改革途径，同时重新确立警察的权力和影响力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In response to the present conflicts surrounding policing, local and national organizations and policy makers have called for increasing civilian oversight and supervision of police departments as one approach to improving police-community relations. Civilian oversight commissions are locally constructed, making it difficult to effectively assess the impact of these commissions on a broader scale. This project is centered in three counties across the US to ask: what factors shape local oversight practices, and what can we learn from these different entities that can be used to effectively assess outcomes across diverse commissions? Selecting sites with distinctive racial dynamics and varying structures of civilian-led police oversight commissions, this project focuses on the varied histories, forms, practices, and successes and failures of civilian oversight. Investigators and student researchers analyze the variations in discourses and practices to understand the specific implementations of civilian oversight of police and to gauge the potential value of civilian oversight commissions on a broader scale. This project will train graduate and undergraduate students in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis.The project uses team-based multi-sited ethnography to study and analyze locally specific features of oversight commissions including their institutional structures, histories, and institutional dynamics. This project develops methods to offer comparative insights into the ways in which oversight commissions operate, with particular attention to what demographic variables are predictive of participation. Tracking the issues that oversight committees engage, researchers will develop theories of the forms through which commissions address community relations and policing. The mere establishment of civilian oversight may be a first step toward a public democratic forum, but this study explores civilian oversight commissions as an institution that can survey possible avenues of accountability and reform, while simultaneously reinscribing the power and influence of policing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.