Criminal Justice and Public Security

Ethnic Profiling in Europe
Bulgaria: Promoting Prosecutorial Accountability
Nigeria: Monitoring Police Conduct During Elections
Peru: Citizen Councils for Police Accountability
South Africa: Enhancing Police Accountability

The Justice Initiative’s work in the field of Criminal Justice and Public Security promotes the state’s ability to secure order and administer justice so as to protect individual rights, promote public security and create an open and responsive criminal justice system. In many countries fear of crime is abetted by citizens’ lack of confidence in the capacity of the criminal justice system to apprehend and successfully prosecute perpetrators of serious criminal activity. The breakdown in public trust is often aggravated by a culture of impunity which shields abusive law enforcement agents, resource and personnel shortages, and a historical legacy of institutional loyalty to political authorities.

Some reformers argue that there are important linkages between increased police (and to a lesser extent prosecutorial) accountability and increased effectiveness—especially in improving citizens’ sense of safety and possibly also in reducing criminal conduct. This perspective is hotly debated. Other theorists and many law enforcement agents contend that over-emphasizing civil rights and constraints on police power may impede effective police work, by inducing more risk-averse behavior among individual officers.

In practice, crime-ridden societies often channel government resources towards tactical interventions designed to have rapid impacts impacts—at least on public perceptions of the seriousness of government efforts. However, many “tough on crime” strategies neglect or weaken police and prosecutorial accountability. Moreover, security measures tend to assist those with economic and political influence, rarely benefiting poorer social sectors and sometimes actively targeting them as “hotbeds of crime.” Criminal justice reforms are frequently abandoned or undergo radical mid-course shifts in direction due to opposition by criminal justice agencies, unclear policy during periods of political transition, or governments’ felt need to respond to public frustration and concern.

In view of the foregoing, Justice Initiative projects are guided by the following objectives:

• To strengthen the accountability of law enforcement agencies (primarily the police and prosecution), and support improved distribution of security resources.
• To demonstrate through empirically-grounded research and practice that accountable policing and prosecution produce more effective law enforcement.
• To identify key structural reforms to policing and prosecutorial institutions that can be supported through limited, strategic interventions.
• To actively engage local civil society actors in law enforcement reform efforts.

In the area of policing reform we pursue these goals through three principal kinds of activities:

• Developing and strengthening top-down state oversight of police, in particular citizen oversight—through civilian review boards or police auditors—and also judicial and political accountability mechanisms;
• Supporting bottom-up civil society or community engagement with policing through monitoring initiatives or through new models of police-community coordination;
• Promoting transparency, accountability and effectiveness in policing through designing and implementing performance indicators and other evaluation criteria, and promoting access to information on crime and law enforcement.