Abstract
The overall purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of police brutality and police impunity as it is discussed in modern studies. The author of the paper reviews and summarizes ten articles that cover different aspects of the topic, ranging from the demographic characteristics of police brutality survivors/victims to the contributions of policies to police impunity. Regarding the key findings, police brutality remains a serious concern in the United States in terms of health, racial equality, and citizens’ preparedness to report crimes. Despite their known harmful effects and substantial legal expenses on police misconduct cases, the use of excessive force and deaths after the violation of police protocols produce felony convictions very rarely. Internal issues, such as unjust promotion practices and the limitations of the use of force policies, can be related to the impunity crisis.
Introduction
Police violence is a phenomenon that demonstrates the incongruity of the key goals of police forces, such as ensuring safer communities, and the actual behaviors of some police officers. The purpose of this paper is to explore current knowledge about police brutality. The goals and objectives include reviewing current scholarly studies to single out the key trends and findings in police brutality research. Despite large expenditures and tremendous consequences for crime prevention, health, and racial equality, police brutality incidents usually remain unpunished, which is probably due to poor use of force policies.
Literature Review
Topic Overview
The paper reviews research focused on the topic of police brutality with special attention to the discussions of impunity for unjustified violence against suspects. The topic is multidimensional and involves questions regarding the existence and extent of police impunity. Due to commonly reported links between police violence and race-based prejudice, the demographic characteristics of police violence survivors should also be explored (Nascimento, 2018). Other elements of the topic are the roots of the culture of police impunity (Bleakley, 2019; Losier, 2017). The effects of unpunished police brutality on local communities and the entire criminal justice system are also emphasized in the modern research literature (Lumsden, 2017). Common citizens’ perceptions of the prevalence of unpunished police violence can be costly for crime prevention due to discouraging people from reporting crimes (Gingerich & Oliveros, 2018).
The definitions of police brutality and impunity are critical for understanding the topic. Modern authors regard impunity as a “pattern of police torture” and the absence of investigation and prosecution of those committing human rights abuses (Losier, 2017, p. 1056). The terms “police brutality” and “police violence” are commonly used interchangeably. However, according to some researchers, the second option emphasizes the systemic nature of inappropriate treatment (Obasogie & Newman, 2017). Sometimes, it is broadly understood as “any situation where public officials use the power invested in them by law to unlawfully kill others” and cause non-lethal injuries (Lumsden, 2017, p. 142). Some authors use the detailed definition of violence formulated by the World Health Organization to define actions that may be considered as police violence. It explains violence as “the intentional use of physical force/power… that results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation” (Obasogie & Newman, 2017, p. 279). In general, there are no meaningful inconsistencies between the definitions of the terms in the selected sources.
Police Brutality in Current Research
Multiple areas, including economics and public health, are discussed within the topic since police brutality and impunity are regarded as prominent and multidimensional issues. According to estimates, about one in one thousand killings by police produce felony convictions (Zimring, 2020). Police violence incurs enormous financial and moral costs for survivors, victims, and their families. It may include the risks of developing disabling post-traumatic stress disorder, especially in minorities, which makes police brutality a public health concern (Lumsden, 2017). Other costs commonly cited by scholars include families’ suffering, community fragmentation, and the destruction of family networks (Lumsden, 2017). Moreover, U.S. states spend millions of dollars on the processing of police violence claims. For instance, between 2004 and 2014, Chicago spent $521 million on investigations and improvement measures (Lumsden, 2017). Despite large expenditures, as per Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the cases of subsequent investigations following the incidents of violence are relatively rare, and many of the accused officers are acquitted (Nascimento, 2018). Therefore, police brutality cases often go unpunished and result in financial losses and long-term mental health effects.
The use of excessive force and impunity are often explored with attention to their large-scale psychological effects and social relationships. There are statements that victims’ public image and people’s tendency to evaluate cases based on personal preferences may contribute to the culture of impunity. Thus, it is suggested that law enforcement professionals are sure that they will receive public support if using excessive force against suspects that “pose little threat in becoming attractive plaintiffs” (Lumsden, 2017, p. 181). Instead of punishment, one police officer even received a raise after using excessive force against Eric Garner and killing the man (Lumsden, 2017). Also, the fear of unpunished police brutality may create a climate of distrust and lawlessness among citizens. In their survey of more than 4.000 individuals, Gingerich and Oliveros (2018) report a negative correlation between witnessing police violence and the willingness to report crimes. Using the data on police-related 911 calls, Desmond et al. (2016) demonstrate that crime reporting by citizens, especially racial minorities, decreases due to exposure to news about police violence. In summary, the effects of police misconduct and impunity on society present a promising research area.
One common issue that scholars report is the role of race as a risk factor for experiencing police violence. According to the United Nations, the analysis of all killings committed by U.S. police officers in 2015 shows that Black males represent “a grossly disproportionate number” of these victims (Nascimento, 2018, p. 64). Other studies demonstrate that young black men are between two and twenty-one times more likely to become police brutality victims compared to their White peers (Gilbert & Ray, 2016; Hogue, 2020). However, not all published statistical reports support this popular truth. Thus, the study by Harvard University based on the data from The Stop, Question, and Frisk program in New York reports no “detectable racial differences” in the use of lethal force (Nascimento, 2018, p. 68). At the same time, there is consensus regarding Black suspects’ elevated risks of encountering non-lethal police violence (Nascimento, 2018). Therefore, there are differences in the estimates of the risks of police violence for racial minorities, but the majority of modern studies report being a Black man as a risk factor.
The role of policy use in promoting impunity is another prominent issue. For example, Losier (2017) mentions unfair promotional policies at Chicago Police Department among the potential contributors to impunity culture. Even well-developed policies do not always promote proportionate punishment; for instance, the officer who killed Robert Russ in 1999 as a result of protocol violations only received a two-week suspension from work (Bleakley, 2019). The so-called use of force policies offer valuable information about the potential roots of impunity. Based on a thematic analysis of such policies in twenty U.S. cities, only 50% of them include thorough discussions of protective approaches, including de-escalation efforts and the use of force continuum (Obasogie & Newman, 2017). Notably, only 25-30% of the analyzed policies emphasize proportionality to resistance and require police officers to intervene when their colleagues use excessive force (Obasogie & Newman, 2017). Worse still, only 35% of the policies contain provisions to focus on police officers’ obligation to report the use of excessive force by others in the profession (Obasogie & Newman, 2017). Therefore, the effectiveness of current police department practices for the prevention of police brutality is questionable.
Methodologies Used in Academic Articles
The articles vary in terms of the methodological approaches to studying police brutality and the lack of punishment for the abuse of power. Many articles, including those by Gilbert and Ray (2016), Hogue (2020), Lumsden (2017), and Zimring (2020), use non-systematic literature reviews based on scholarly sources and legal documents. In two studies, non-systematic reviews are combined with other qualitative approaches. This includes the case study method in Nascimento (2018) and a thematic analysis of policies regarding the use of force in Obasogie and Newman (2017). Losier (2017) and Bleakley (2019) make use of the case study method. The remaining two studies demonstrate the use of the quasi-experimental time-series analysis (Desmond et al., 2016) and the survey method (Gingerich & Oliveros, 2018). The majority of the authors, except for Gingerich and Oliveros (2018), use unobtrusive measures. Their conclusions are based on the analysis of data retrieved from previously published studies, well-known legal cases, and datasets that feature crime reporting patterns and statistics.
The geographic locations and the properties of research samples also shed light on popular approaches to studying police brutality. In nine articles, the authors explore police brutality in the United States, and six of them mainly discuss country-wide tendencies, whereas three articles focus on particular states. Thus, Desmond et al. (2016) use data from Milwaukee, WI, whereas Bleakley (2019) and Losier (2017) explore controversies in Chicago, IL. The only article with obtrusive methods provides little information on the participants and only reports their age (older than eighteen) (Gingerich & Oliveros, 2018). In the articles exploring specific police brutality victims, the victims (Michael Brown, Robert Russ, Fredrick Hampton, Mark Clark, Eric Garner, Frank Jude Jr., etc.) are African-American men younger than thirty (Bleakley, 2019; Nascimento, 2018). Desmond et al. (2016) explore the effect of police brutality cases on crime reporting by analyzing 911 calls from predominantly White and predominantly Black communities. The remaining studies mainly review the sources that focus on police violence against Black men.
Literature Search Methodology
The information comes from ten articles found with the help of easily accessible database search tools, such as JSTOR and Google Scholar. Both databases were equally helpful and provided very similar search results. However, the JSTOR tool was easier to navigate due to advanced search settings, including the opportunity to select the subjects of interest. In the absence of advanced search settings, I sorted Google Scholar search results by relevance to the key terms and manually checked the most relevant findings to ensure the literature’s scholarly nature. To conduct a search, I applied a series of key terms aside from activating settings related to subjects, publication date (not older than five years), and source type (journal). Among them were the following terms: “police brutality,” “police violence,” “police killings,” “police impunity,” “police violence statistics,” “abuse of police power,” and “unpunished police brutality.”
The articles were published in different international and local scientific journals by scholars from dissimilar fields. Not all of these journals focus solely on criminology issues, and the sources covering topics at the intersection of politics, law, sociology, history, and medicine are present. One problem that I ran into was that the discussions of police impunity were more common in non-scholarly sources, including opinionated newspaper articles. As for the scholars’ demographics, the authors of the selected studies are university lecturers and associate professors working for educational institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom. The authors of the included articles have degrees in Criminal Justice, Political Sciences, Sociology, and Public Health. Their research interests include police brutality and adjacent topics, for instance, urban criminology, police corruption, race and racial prejudice, poverty, clientelism, and similar problems.
Discussion
Regarding its state, the topic has been researched from multiple viewpoints. The state of knowledge supports the development of new approaches to increasing police officers’ accountability for violent actions. It might include public health engagement, the reforms of current use of force policies, and civilian oversight of law enforcement (Losier, 2017; Obasogie & Newman, 2017). Based on the available knowledge about impunity, its influences, and potential contributing factors, many authors support the implementation of intersectionality frameworks to fill in the remaining research gaps and promote reductions in unpunished police brutality. Additionally, research findings that establish ethnicity/race-based prejudice as important elements of unpunished police violence are pervasive. These conclusions may find practical use in newer, more effective police department workforce diversification programs (Bleakly, 2019; Losier, 2017). Current research offers multiple suggestions regarding the roots of unpunished use of excessive force, which is likely to make the process of strategy development time-consuming.
The key limitations include the lack of unity in approaches to research and the approximate nature of statistics on police violence incidents that do not cause consequences. The estimates of risks of encountering police brutality among different races vary depending on the source (Gilbert & Ray, 2016; Hogue, 2020; Nascimento, 2018). The difference probably points to the need for the unification of statistical research methodologies applied in such studies. The limited opportunity to confirm and replicate some conclusions is another prominent limitation. For instance, it is not perfectly clear whether the survey method and the thin-slicing technique advance criminology research and lead to credible conclusions about police brutality (Bleakley, 2019; Gingerich & Oliveros, 2018). Also, the inability to accurately assess the number of police violence incidents with non-serious health consequences that remain unreported might limit society’s understanding of the police impunity problem. Hopefully, new attempts to unify approaches to data collection and analysis will pave the way towards practical improvement.
Conclusion
Police violence and the lack of accountability remain critical issues today. Despite the effects of using excessive force against citizens, including interracial mistrust, the killings of suspects rarely result in felony charges against police officers. The exact causes of low persecution rates are yet to be studied, but modern authors see the limitations of the use of force policies and unfair promotion practices as potential contributors to the culture of impunity.
References
Bleakley, P. (2019). A thin-slice of institutionalised police brutality: A tradition of excessive force in the Chicago Police Department. Criminal Law Forum, 30(4), 425-449.
Desmond, M., Papachristos, A. V., & Kirk, D. S. (2016). Police violence and citizen crime reporting in the black community. American Sociological Review, 81(5), 857-876.
Gilbert, K. L., & Ray, R. (2016). Why police kill black males with impunity: Applying public health critical race praxis (PHCRP) to address the determinants of policing behaviors and “justifiable” homicides in the USA. Journal of Urban Health, 93(1), 122-140.
Gingerich, D. W., & Oliveros, V. (2018). Police violence and the underreporting of crime. Economics & Politics, 30(1), 78-105.
Hogue, K. M. (2020). When an officer kills: Turning legal police conduct into illegal police misconduct. Texas Law Review, 98(3), 601-624.
Losier, T. (2017). “The public does not believe the police can police themselves”: The Mayoral Administration of Harold Washington and the problem of police impunity. Journal of Urban History, 46(5), 1050-1065.
Lumsden, E. (2017). How much is police brutality costing America. University of Hawaii Law Review, 40, 142-201.
Nascimento, I. (2018). Hands up, don’t shoot: The use of deadly force by police against racial minorities in the United States. U.C. Davis Journal of International Law & Policy, 24, 63-97.
Obasogie, O. K., & Newman, Z. (2017). Police violence, use of force policies, and public health. American Journal of Law & Medicine, 43(2-3), 279-295.
Zimring, F. E. (2020). Police killings as a problem of governance. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 687(1), 114–123.