Knowing better, doing better? Lessons for police reform from a developmental science law enforcement training program.

Tuesday, September 15 4:30 - 6 PM (PT) Hybrid: 340 Haviland Hall, UC Berkeley & Zoom Register Today (Free) Leah Jacobs, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh with Bethany Jo Murray, Turpanjian Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Southern California Moderated by Tina Sacks, Associate Professor of Social Welfare and Chair of Center for Research on Social Change Youth commonly encounter police in their daily lives, and one of every four arrests in the United States is of a person under the age of 25. Compared to adults, interactions between youth and police more often lead to use of force and physical and emotional harm—harms that disproportionately burden the economically poor and Black youth who come into contact with police at relatively high rates. Debates over the proper role of police in managing young people have existed for over a century, yet there is little consensus as to what the ideal relationship between youth and law enforcement should be, systematic efforts to alter these relationships have had limited or even perverse results, and contemporary phenomena (e.g., social media, teen “takeovers,” and changing parenting approaches) bring new challenges to youth-police relations and reform efforts. This talk brings together developmental science, historical sociology, anti-carceral perspectives, and primary research to make sense of “what works” (and doesn’t work) in implementing police reform for youth. To do so, Jacobs and co-investigator Murray will draw on diverse data sources, including interviews (n = 26) and surveys with police (n = 111), and non-participant observation of police training (154 hours) in a California county, sharing preliminary findings from an ongoing, mixed methods, multi-site and multi-year impact and implementation study of a law enforcement training program that seeks to improve police-youth interactions. Implications for scholarship and intervention will be discussed.