The Revolving Door: Revisiting Practical Limitations of DOJ Agreements to Promote Structural Police Reform

• In Event: The Evolution Accountability: EIS, Police Reform, and Incident Characteristics

Abstract

Contemporary sociolegal and criminological scholarship on pattern-or-practice agreements overwhelmingly focuses on examining the effectiveness of Department of Justice consent decrees to promote structural police reform. Yet, less attention has been paid to how the structure of these agreements might inhibit interested parties from achieving their intended goals of reform. In this paper, we leverage an original dataset of all pattern-or-practice agreements (N=42) to trace three
diverging pathways the U.S. government has pursued to inspire structural police reforms: 1)
court-ordered consent decrees and settlement agreements, 2) memorandums of agreement (or
understanding), and 3) technical assistance letters. Preliminary results suggest that there are distinct levels of accountability associated with each type of pattern-or-practice agreement. Consent decrees and settlement agreements provide the greatest level of accountability in the form of court oversight, memorandums of agreement provide very limited accountability, and technical assistance letters afford no accountability. Yet, even in cities with consent decrees, the positive effects of consent decrees wane over time after agreements are terminated and translate to inconsistent municipal-led efforts to achieve police reform objectives. This study illuminates how the mobilization processes and underlying structural characteristics of DOJ pattern-or-practice agreements impact the efficacy of structural police reform efforts in the 21st Century.

Authors

• Demar F. Lewis IV, University of Maryland

• Mark Mills, University of Maryland