The Center for Justice Research’s recent policy brief highlights the process of civil payouts for police misconduct, highlighting inefficacies and an overall lack of accountability. Importantly, we outline the shortcomings of other responses to police misconduct, such as implicit bias training and body cameras, and offer a path toward police accountability through financial liability. Rather than spending huge sums of taxpayer dollars on civil payouts, officers and departments that engage in excessive force and misconduct should feel this liability directly through higher police insurance premiums and community-led funding decisions.

Dr. Ray (brief author) writes, “Current law enforcement protocols hold officers internally accountable, but they are not externally held accountable to the communities they serve. By restructuring police-civilian payouts from taxpayer funding to police department insurances, monies typically spent on civilian payouts and lawyer fees can be used for education, jobs, and infrastructure.”

Key points: ● The murders of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice exemplify “loopholes in the criminal justice system” that enable officers to engage in excessive force and misconduct and continue their employment as officers in the same department or elsewhere, with little recourse for their actions.

● This lack of accountability, coupled with racial disparities in policing, results in devastating effects for Black communities, who are 3.5 times more likely to die at the hands of police.

● Restructuring civilian payouts for police misconduct could shift the financial burden onto officers and departments rather than struggling communities, thereby contributing to greater police accountability.

● Current approaches, such as implicit bias training and body cameras, are not effective if they are not coupled with police accountability.

Read the full policy brief here.