Collaborative Research: Variables Influencing the Efficacy of Civilian Oversight Commissions

针对目前围绕维持治安的冲突，地方和国家组织以及决策者呼吁加强对警察部门的文职监督和监督，以此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，因此难以在更大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：哪些因素影响了当地的监督实践，以及我们可以从这些不同的实体中学到什么，从而可以有效地评估不同委员会的结果？该项目选择具有独特种族动态和不同结构的公民领导的警察监督委员会，重点是不同的历史，形式，做法，以及民事监督的成功和失败。调查人员和学生研究人员分析话语和实践的变化，以了解民警的公民监督的具体实施，并在更广泛的范围内衡量公民监督委员会的潜在价值。本项目将对研究生和本科生进行定量和定性数据收集和分析方面的培训。该项目使用基于团队的多地点人种学来研究和分析监督委员会的地方具体特征，包括其制度结构、历史和制度动态。该项目制定了各种方法，以提供对监督委员会运作方式的比较性见解，特别注意哪些人口变量可预测参与情况。跟踪监督委员会参与的问题，研究人员将开发通过委员会解决社区关系和警务形式的理论。仅仅建立平民监督可能是迈向公共民主论坛的第一步，但本研究探讨了平民监督委员会作为一个可以调查问责和改革可能途径的机构，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力进行评估来支持审查标准。

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.