Procedural justice training reduces police use of force and complaints against officers.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wood G
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7211954 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Three studies translate social dominance theory to policing, testing the relationship between individual officers' endorsement of social hierarchies and their tendency to use force against residents. This article demonstrates a link between officer psychological factors and force. Because police are empowered to use force to maintain social order, and because White officers hold a dominant racial identity, we hypothesized social dominance orientation (SDO) would relate to force positively for White officers. For Black officers, we hypothesized a weak relationship between SDO and force, if any. To test these predictions, we examined the relationships between SDO and force using negative binomial regression models stratified by officer race. In an eastern city, SDO relates to force incidents positively for White officers and negatively for Black officers. In a southern city, SDO relates to force positively for White officers, and not significantly for Black officers. Stratified by race and rank, a second eastern city shows a marginally significant, positive SDO/force relationship for White patrol officers, and no significant SDO/force relationship for Black patrol officers. Finally, testing our hypotheses on a dataset pooled across these cities revealed a positive SDO/force relationship among White officers, and no significant SDO/force relationship among Black officers. These findings are consistent with our hypotheses and suggest a need to examine the role that maintaining social hierarchies plays in police behaviors. Future research must continue to investigate these relationships, especially with larger samples of non-White officers, and information about officers' patrol environments.
| S-EPMC8106355 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Police Special Forces (a.k.a. special weapons and tactics [SWAT]) officers are tasked with responding to the most critical situations, including incidents that require specialized skills and equipment beyond typical policing activities. In this study, we tested the feasibility of applying Arnetz and colleagues' resilience promotion training that was developed for patrol officers to SWAT team officers (n = 18). The resilience promotion training program included psychoeducation focused on police stress and resilience, and the practice of resilience promotion techniques (controlled breathing and imagery) while listening to audio-recorded critical incident scenarios. The aims of this study were to (a) examine if a resilience training program was relevant and accepted by SWAT team officers and (b) assess participants' physiological stress responses (heart rate, respiration) during the resilience training sessions to note if there were improvements in stress responding over time. Our findings revealed that participants were able to significantly reduce their average heart rate and improve their ability to engage in controlled respiration (i.e., breathing) during simulated critical incidents over the course of the 5-day training. Improvements in stress responding were observed even when the critical incident scenarios became more graphic. Results suggest that an intervention to reduce stress responses of SWAT officers to critical incident scenarios works in a simulated training setting. Translation of these findings to real-world occupational hazards is a recommended next step.
| S-EPMC4484868 | biostudies-literature
Project description:There are substantial, unexplained racial disparities in women's health. Some of the most pronounced involve elevated rates of preterm delivery (PTD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Black women. We hypothesized that stress associated with excessive use of force by police may contribute to these disparities. In two prospective cohorts derived from electronic health records (pregnancy cohort, N = 67,976; CVD cohort, N = 6773), we linked formal complaints of excessive police force in patients' neighborhoods with health outcomes. Exposed Black women were 1.19 times as likely to experience PTD [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04 to 1.35] and 1.42 times as likely to develop CVD (95% CI: 1.12 to 1.79), even after adjustment for neighborhood disadvantage and homicide. The excess risks of PTD were also observed in maternal fixed-effects analyses comparing births to the same woman. These findings suggest police violence may be an unrecognized contributor to health inequity for Black women.
| S-EPMC8769548 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background: Police officers' high-stress levels and its deleterious consequences are raising awareness to an epidemic of mental health problems and quality of life (QoL) impairment. There is a growing evidence that mindfulness-based interventions are efficacious to promote mental health and well-being among high-stress occupations. Methods: The POLICE study is a multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT) with three assessment points (baseline, post-intervention, and 6-month follow-up) where police officers were randomized to mindfulness-based health promotion (MBHP) (n = 88) or a waiting list (n = 82). This article focuses on QoL, depression and anxiety symptoms, and religiosity outcomes. Mechanisms of change and MBHP feasibility were evaluated. Results: Significant group × time interaction was found for QoL, depression and anxiety symptoms, and non-organizational religiosity. Between-group analysis showed that MBHP group exhibited greater improvements in QoL, and depression and anxiety symptoms at both post-intervention (QoL d = 0.69 to 1.01; depression d = 0.97; anxiety d = 0.73) and 6-month follow-up (QoL d = 0.41 to 0.74; depression d = 0.60; anxiety d = 0.51), in addition to increasing non-organizational religiosity at post-intervention (d = 0.31). Changes on self-compassion mediated the relationship between group and pre-to-post changes for all QoL domains and facets. Group effect on QoL overall health facet at post-intervention was moderated by mindfulness trait and spirituality changes. Conclusion: MBHP is feasible and efficacious to improve QoL, and depression and anxiety symptoms among Brazilian officers. Results were maintained after 6 months. MBHP increased non-organizational religiosity, although the effect was not sustained 6 months later. To our knowledge, this is the first mindfulness-based intervention RCT to empirically demonstrate these effects among police officers. Self-compassion, mindfulness trait, and spirituality mechanisms of change are examined. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov. identifier: NCT03114605.
| S-EPMC7952984 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Epigenetic and genetic profiles (N=67) were based on the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip. We searched for differentially methylated probes (DMPs) and regions (DMRs). For genetic associations we analyzed the CpG-SNPs present on the array
2018-01-24 | GSE99755 | GEO
Project description:Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increased risk to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout (BO). It is currently not well understood which officers are most at risk to develop these disorders. The aim of this study was to determine which coping strategies and personality traits could act as protective or risk factors in relation to PTSD and BO. The second aim, in the interest of designating preventive and therapeutical measures, was to determine whether certain profiles of police officers could be identified as high risk for developing mental disorders. Herein, 1073 French-speaking police officers in Switzerland reported in an online survey about their PTSD and BO symptoms, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, coping strategies, occupational stress, and personality factors. The cluster analysis highlighted three principal profiles of police officers: those who are not at risk of developing pathologies because they are not exposed or insensitive to these stressors, and those who are, among which personality and coping strategies oriented the risk of developing PTSD or BO. These same protective and risk factors were also corroborated in the linear and logistic regression analyses. These results may suggest that a crucial opportunity for mitigating mental health issues in the force could consist of screening recruits for risk-related personality traits and orienting them towards psychological training programs for the development of functional coping strategies.
| S-EPMC9368562 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Crucial elements for police firearms training include mastering very specific psychophysiological responses associated with controlled breathing while shooting. Under high-stress situations, the shooter is affected by responses of the sympathetic nervous system that can impact respiration. This research focuses on how frontal oscillatory brainwaves and cardiovascular responses of trained police officers (N = 10) are affected during a virtual reality (VR) firearms training routine. We present data from an experimental study wherein shooters were interacting in a VR-based training simulator designed to elicit psychophysiological changes under easy, moderate and frustrating difficulties. Outcome measures in this experiment include electroencephalographic and heart rate variability (HRV) parameters, as well as performance metrics from the VR simulator. Results revealed that specific frontal areas of the brain elicited different responses during resting states when compared with active shooting in the VR simulator. Moreover, sympathetic signatures were found in the HRV parameters (both time and frequency) reflecting similar differences. Based on the experimental findings, we propose a psychophysiological model to aid the design of a biocybernetic adaptation layer that creates real-time modulations in simulation difficulty based on targeted physiological responses.
| S-EPMC7179757 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This research builds on three decades of effort to produce national estimates of the amount and rate of force used by law enforcement officers in the United States. Prior efforts to produce national estimates have suffered from poor and inconsistent measurements of force, small and unrepresentative samples, low survey and/or item response rates, and disparate reporting of rates of force. The present study employs data from a nationally representative survey of state and local law enforcement agencies that has a high survey response rate as well as a relatively high rate of reporting uses of force. Using data on arrests for violent offenses and the number of sworn officers to impute missing data on uses of force, we estimate a total of 337,590 use of physical force incidents among State and local law enforcement agencies during 2012 with a 95 percent confidence interval of +/- 10,470 incidents or +/- 3.1 percent. This article reports the extent to which the number and rate of force incidents vary by the type and size of law enforcement agencies. Our findings demonstrate the willingness of a large proportion of law enforcement agencies to voluntarily report the amount of force used by their officers and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) program to produce nationally representative information about police behavior.
| S-EPMC5813980 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The role of implicit processes during police-civilian encounters is well studied from the perspective of the police. Decades of research on the "shooter bias" suggests that implicit Black-danger associations potentiate the perception of threat of Black individuals, leading to a racial bias in the decision to use lethal force. Left understudied are civilians' possible associations of police with danger and how such associations pervade behavior and explicit views of the police. The current work begins to address this gap. In two within-subjects studies, we separately assess police-threat (i.e., safety/danger) and police-valence (i.e., good/bad) associations as well as their relative influences on explicit perceptions of police. Study 1 revealed that implicit threat evaluations (police-danger associations) more strongly predicted negative explicit views of the police compared to implicit valence evaluations (police-negative associations). Study 2 replicated these findings and suggests that individuals evaluate the police as more dangerous versus negative when each response is pitted against each other within single misattribution procedure trials. The possible implications for explicit attitudes toward police reform and behavior during police-civilian encounters are discussed.
| S-EPMC8688646 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:Police officers experience a high degree of chronic stress. Policing ranks among the highest professions in terms of disease and accident rates. Mental health is particularly impacted, evidenced by elevated rates of burnout, anxiety and depression, and poorer quality of life than the general public. Mindfulness training has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, burnout and promote quality of life in a variety of settings, although its efficacy in this context has yet to be systematically evaluated. Therefore, this trial will investigate the efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention versus a waitlist control in improving quality of life and reducing negative mental health symptoms in police officers. METHODS:This multicenter randomized controlled trial has three assessment points: baseline, post-intervention, and six-month follow-up. Active police officers (n?=?160) will be randomized to Mindfulness-Based Health Promotion (MBHP) or waitlist control group at two Brazilian major cities: Porto Alegre and São Paulo. The primary outcomes are burnout symptoms and quality of life. Consistent with the MBHP conceptual model, assessed secondary outcomes include perceived stress, anxiety and depression symptoms, and the potential mechanisms of resilience, mindfulness, decentering, self-compassion, spirituality, and religiosity. DISCUSSION:Findings from this study will inform and guide future research, practice, and policy regarding police offer health and quality of life in Brazil and globally. TRIAL REGISTRATION:ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03114605 . Retrospectively registered on March 21, 2017.
| S-EPMC5970505 | biostudies-literature