Impacts of CRB reforms & neighborhood characteristics on police misconduct complaint outcomes: Evidence from Chicago

• In Event: 21009 - Policing & Surveillance

Abstract

In recent decades, considerable efforts have been made to strengthen oversight of law enforcement misconduct adjudication processes, in part based on the notion that external review of police misconduct cases is more thorough and impartial. While civilian review boards (CRBs) mitigate numerous pitfalls of internal investigation processes, empirical research regarding their impact on case outcomes has yielded mixed findings. To address this gap, this study uses generalized linear regression models to assess the impact of reforms to Chicago's civilian complaint investigation procedures on the likelihood of citizen complaints being sustained. More specifically, I analyze over 16,000 citizen complaints filed about Chicago police officers that were reviewed and closed between 2007 and 2024 by COPA (Chicago's Civilian Office of Police Accountability) or its predecessor agency. In addition to information about the incident, complainants, and officers involved, this research is novel in that it also takes account of demographic characteristics of the police beat where each incident occurred. Preliminary results indicate that complaints were more likely to be sustained after 2016 reforms that strengthened the independence of the external oversight of the CPD (Chicago Police Department). In line with existing research, findings from this study also indicate that racial disparities in the rate of sustained complaints have persisted over time. However, using ACS data to compute the demographic characteristics of police beats, I find that the racial composition and economic disadvantage of neighborhoods has a statistically significant association with citizen complaint case outcomes, and that taking account of these variables impacts the way in which racial disparities in case outcomes can be understood.

Author

• Michelle Shames, Northwestern University