Police Cameras Affirmation
102: Police Cameras - Aff
The use of cameras cuts down on violent incidents and citizen complaints
Chief Tony Farrar (graduate degrees in Administration of Justice and Business
Administration, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Police Science.
2013 graduate from the
University of Cambridge (UK) - Institute of Criminology with an additional graduate degree in Criminology and Police Management. Police officer of 34 years.)
“SELF-AWARENESS TO BEING WATCHED AND SOCIALLY-DESIRABLE BEHAVIOR: A
FIELD EXPERIMENT ON THE EFFECT OF BODY-WORN CAMERAS ON POLICE USE-OF
FORCE.”
Police Foundation
. March
2013
. Accessed on 2/27/2015 at http://www.policefoundation.org/content/body-worn-camera .
“
In this experiment we tested for the first time the effect of mobile cameras on self-awareness and ultimately socially-desirable behavior
.
The cameras were hypothesized to increase police officers selfconsciousness that they were being watched and therefore to increase their compliance to rules of conduct, especially around use of force. T he
findings suggest more than a 50% reduction in the total number of incidents of use-of-force compared to control-conditions, and nearly ten times more citizens’ complaints in the 12-months prior to the experiment
.
The implications of these findings for psycho-social theories and particularly for our understanding of self-awareness are meaningful but perhaps not unexpected. We anticipated that the videotaped interactions will experience fewer incidents of use of force, because of the fundamental tendency of rational-beings to exhibit more desirable behaviors when they know under surveillance, particularly in scenarios that require them to follow rules
.W
hat is surprising, however, is that as far as we can tell this is the first field-experiment that has tested this paradigm in real-life settings – at least under these conditions. Mobile cameras are “everywhere” but at the same time nowhere in social science research, insofar as studying
The use of cameras cuts down on violent incidents and citizen complaints
Chief Tony Farrar (graduate degrees in Administration of Justice and Business
Administration, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Police Science.
2013 graduate from the
University of Cambridge (UK) - Institute of Criminology with an additional graduate degree in Criminology and Police Management. Police officer of 34 years.)
“SELF-AWARENESS TO BEING WATCHED AND SOCIALLY-DESIRABLE BEHAVIOR: A
FIELD EXPERIMENT ON THE EFFECT OF BODY-WORN CAMERAS ON POLICE USE-OF
FORCE.”
Police Foundation
. March
2013
. Accessed on 2/27/2015 at http://www.policefoundation.org/content/body-worn-camera .
“
In this experiment we tested for the first time the effect of mobile cameras on self-awareness and ultimately socially-desirable behavior
.
The cameras were hypothesized to increase police officers selfconsciousness that they were being watched and therefore to increase their compliance to rules of conduct, especially around use of force. T he
findings suggest more than a 50% reduction in the total number of incidents of use-of-force compared to control-conditions, and nearly ten times more citizens’ complaints in the 12-months prior to the experiment
.
The implications of these findings for psycho-social theories and particularly for our understanding of self-awareness are meaningful but perhaps not unexpected. We anticipated that the videotaped interactions will experience fewer incidents of use of force, because of the fundamental tendency of rational-beings to exhibit more desirable behaviors when they know under surveillance, particularly in scenarios that require them to follow rules
.W
hat is surprising, however, is that as far as we can tell this is the first field-experiment that has tested this paradigm in real-life settings – at least under these conditions. Mobile cameras are “everywhere” but at the same time nowhere in social science research, insofar as studying