Reforming 'pattern-or-practice' police reform: what works, what does not, and where we need to go

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has used the pattern-or-practice initiative to implement police reform in maligned law enforcement agencies. Despite the longevity of the program, there is limited empirical evidence that assesses the effectiveness of the initiative, and what evidence exists shows mixed results. This paper advances prior scholarship in this area by considering what is known about the program, outlining the implied theory of the DOJ’s efforts, lamenting the lack of evaluation evidence, and prescribing a modern research agenda for this topic area.

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ARTICLE TITLE: Reforming ‘pattern-or-practice’ police reform: what works, what does not, and where we need to
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Reforming ‘paern-or-practice’ police reform: what works,
what does not, and where we need to go
Zachary A. Powell1,*,, Joshua Chanin2
1School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, California State University, San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA,
United States
2School of Public Aairs, College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, United States
*Corresponding author. School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, California State University, San Bernardino, CA, USA.
E-mail: zachary.powell@csusb.edu
ABSTRACT
Over the last 30 years, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has used the paern-or-practice initiative to implement police reform in maligned law
enforcement agencies. Despite the longevity of the program, there is limited empirical evidence that assesses the eectiveness of the initiative,
and what evidence exists shows mixed results. is paper advances prior scholarship in this area by considering what is known about the pro-
gram, outlining the implied theory of the DOJ’s eorts, lamenting the lack of evaluation evidence, and prescribing a modern research agenda for
this topic area.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Justice
(DOJ) has made regular use of the powerful ‘paern-or-prac-
tice’ initiative to investigate and instigate reform in police agen-
cies (e White House 2023; Walker 2024). In stark contrast
to the Trump administration, which largely abandoned the
process upon taking oce (Ainsley 2020), the Biden DOJ has
initiated 10 investigations, while overseeing 18 other agencies
as they work to correct unconstitutional practices that damaged
police-community relationships, abridged search, and seizure
protections, and violated civilian protections against the unlaw-
ful use of force (Bruner et al. 2022; Walker 2022, 2024).
Despite widespread use, paern-or-practice receives mixed
support from academics, practitioners, and policymakers. Pro-
ponents see the initiative as a means of instigating change in
deeply awed organizations because federal consent decrees
oer a blueprint for implementing lawful, accountable, and
legitimate policing. Critics argue that changes brought by DOJ
intervention rarely function as designed, are at risk of erosion
and abandonment, and the steep costs associated with the pro-
cess, such as de-policing (Rushin and Edwards 2016; Chanin
and Sheats 2018; Devi and Fryer 2020), outweigh even best-
case outcomes. e scholarly literature is similarly divided, with
empirical evidence used to justify both perspectives (McMickle
2003; Walker 2003, 2022, 2024; Rushin 2014, 2016; Chanin
2015; Greenberger 2016; Powell et al. 2017; D’Souza et al. 2019;
Hathaway 2019; Norman 2019; Goh 2020; Ostrowe 2020).
is paper oers a detailed review of the paern-or-prac-
tice reform initiative, with an eye toward developing
recommendations for strengthening the process. Drawing on an
analysis of 30 years of investigative leers, independent moni-
tor reports, and selement instruments, we evaluate what has
worked and where the initiative has fallen short. Several ndings
are worth noting. Relative to its import and inuence, very lit-
tle is known about the extent of paern-or-practice’s ability to
improve the constitutionality of policing. We outline a series of
critical recommendations necessary to improve ongoing prac-
tice and future interventions so that the use of paern-or-prac-
tice eectively addresses wrongful law enforcement behavior.
BACKGROUND
Paern-or-practice reform
e basics
Born out of frustration at the inability of federal ocials to
address dysfunction in the Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD) in the aermath of the Rodney King beating (DOJ
2017), Section 14141 (now Section 12601) of the 1994 Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act empowers the DOJ to
investigate state and local organizations alleged to have engaged
in excessive use of force, racial discrimination, or other system-
atic violations of the law.
If a paern is discovered, federal aorneys may take legal
action to remedy the misconduct and bring the department into
legal compliance. In nearly every case, aected jurisdictions,
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2 • Z. A. Powell and J. Chanin
which have included Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago,
and Seale, opt to sele with the DOJ. Selement necessitates
agreeing to pursue an onerous series of reforms, diced into
dozens of tasks, each associated with specic, aggressive dead-
lines. ese terms, set in the form of either a consent decree or
a memorandum of understanding, are legally binding (DOJ
2017; Donnelly and Salvatore 2019). Implementation is over-
seen by DOJ sta aorneys and, in some cases, a team of inde-
pendent monitors. Selement conditions remain in place until
the department can convince a federal judge they have satised
its terms.1
In most cases, agreements require the establishment of sys-
tems to address unconstitutional uses of force and the elimina-
tion of ocer discrimination during routine trac stops and
other discretionary enforcement activities (Greenberger 2016;
DOJ 2017; Donnelly and Salvatore 2019; Walker 2022, 2024).
To those ends, nearly all of the 38 paern-or-practice selements
initiated since 1994 use the same set of command-and-control
style reforms, including mandated policy changes, training pro-
tocols to familiarize sworn sta with the new requirements, and
both internal and external oversight mechanisms to promote
ocer compliance and accountability (Rushin 2014; Chanin
2015; Donnelly and Salvatore 2019; Ostrowe 2020; Walker
2022, 2024).
Paern-or-practice intervention has also been used as a means
of addressing the tension between police and the communities
they serve. A detailed content analysis of paern-or-practice
agreements shows the DOJ prioritizes reforms aimed at improv-
ing community relations, beering ocer oversight, limiting
biased practices, deploying new technologies, increasing train-
ing, revamping use of force policy, and other departmental
policy improvements toward this end (Donnelly and Salvatore
2019). Portland’s Commiee on Community Engaged-Policing,
for example, serves as a conduit between the police and the city’s
grassroots organizations, communities of color, and other stake-
holders (U.S. v. City of Portland 2012). Similar organizations
are present in Newark (U.S. v. City of Newark 2016, Section V),
Ferguson (U.S. v. City of Ferguson 2016, Section III), and Albu-
querque (U.S. v. City of Albuquerque 2014, Section XII), among
others. Some selements focus on managerial interventions, like
the use of community and problem-oriented policing strategies
(e.g. U.S. v. Baltimore 2017, Section III, Part A), community
outreach (e.g. U.S. v. City of Los Angeles 2001, Section X), and
training ocers in cultural sensitivity and implicit bias tech-
niques (e.g. U.S. v. City of Ferguson 2016, Section XVII, Part C).
Selements developed in several jurisdictions require the use of
community surveys and focus groups to measure public percep-
tions of the police and gauge response to the reform eorts (e.g.
U.S. v. City of New Orleans 2012, Section X, Part B).
Few DOJ selements require departments or independent
monitor teams to evaluate the impact of the required changes.
Indeed, agreements developed during the Clinton and Bush
presidential administrations did not address evaluation at all.
Certain Obama and Biden selements include more explicit
calls to consider performance outcomes in addition to imple-
mentation metrics (Donnelly and Salvatore 2019). e Newark
consent decree urges the monitor team to ‘review’ relevant data
(U.S. v. City of Newark 2016, Section XVI, Part C), for example,
while in Cleveland, monitors are charged with using ‘quantita-
tive and qualitative assessments to measure’ reform eectiveness
(U.S. v. City of Cleveland 2015, para. 367). ese changes,
however, have not translated into publicly available process and
impact evaluations.
Implied theory of paern-or-practice
Although the DOJ does not explicitly spell out a theory of change,
there is an implied theory in the core components of selement
documents spanning the initiative’s full history, which informs
the DOJ’s recommendations and expectations. First, DOJ set-
tlement documents suggest that department civil rights viola-
tions stem from faulty or vague policies that grant ocers too
much discretion. Second, a systematic lack of access to modern
training practices enables poor decision-making among ocers
as they are unaware of new legal standards or eective practices
in law enforcement. ird, faulty internal accountability systems
limit the ability of an agency to hold ocers accountable for mis-
behavior and contribute to a culture where civil rights violations
become implicitly acceptable to the organization. Each of these
issues, then, creates a breeding ground for misconduct within
the organization.
To correct these issues, the DOJ mandates departments
update all policies and procedures to remove ambiguity and
comply with all relevant legal standards. Ocers must learn new
policies and receive extensive new training to ensure appropri-
ate mastery of constitutional policing. Potential violations of
policy and training are found through extensive documentation
requirements that require ocers to outline their decision-mak-
ing process and permit the review of ocer actions and behavior.
Further, the internal accountability systems, through supervisor
oversight and internal investigations, are intended to increase
the perceived certainty of a sanction should misbehavior occur
(Nagin 2013). erefore, the DOJ relies on ocer reeducation,
clear bright lines for structuring discretion, and stronger sanc-
tion threats to revamp organizational practices and curtail civil
rights abuses.
Finally, recent DOJ investigations prioritize police-commu-
nity relationships in the hope that police respond to the needs
of the public and limit misconduct. Bridging gaps between these
groups is believed to encourage crime reporting, investigation
participation, and reporting of problematic police–civilian
encounters (Goldstein 1979, 1987; Tyler 2003). Including the
community, then, should repair fractured relationships, instill
trust in law enforcement, and help the police remain account-
able to the public.
Evaluating the initiative
From the DOJ’s perspective, reform ‘success’ is measured in
terms of a department’s faithful execution of the selement
terms. Jurisdictions are released from oversight when they have
1Note that the Trump Administration, like the George W. Bush Administration before
it, was opposed to the use of federal authority to intervene in state and local policing.
Under Trump, the DOJ aempted to back out of the consent decree negotiated between
the Obama Administration and the City of Baltimore. Tr ump’s D OJ also ‘refused to fol-
low through on an agreement-in-principle…reached with the City of Chicago to nego-
tiate a consent decree’ (Lopez 2021: 3). In November 2018, then-Aorney General
Je Sessions issued a memorandum strictly limiting the use of the paern-or-practice
initiative to address systematic unlawful police behavior (Benner 2018). e memo
was rescinded by President Biden in 2021 (Balsamo 2021).
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Reforming ‘paern-or-practice’ police reform • 3
demonstrated to an independent monitor, relevant DOJ sta,
and/or federal judge, which all selement terms have been met.
To date, 25 of the 38 jurisdictions (66 percent) that faced DOJ
intervention have successfully completed the process. is is a
notable accomplishment given the challenges inherent to com-
prehensive, externally imposed organizational reform and the
long history of failure that has characterized past eorts of this
kind (Pressman and Wildavsky 1984; Skogan 2014). e nature
of the task may also help to explain the eusive language that
oen characterizes independent monitor reports and press asso-
ciated with departments that have reached the end stages of the
process. For example, in a nal report to the judge overseeing the
selement between the DOJ and Washington D.C., the indepen-
dent monitor stated that the Metropolitan Police Department’s
reform ‘should serve as a model for law enforcement agen-
cies across the United States that are serious about improving
their use of force-related policies, procedures, and practices’
(Bromwich 2008: 1).
Despite these claims, there is mixed evidence to support the
notion that satisfying the terms of the selement eectively
addresses the unlawful conduct at issue or leads to more equi-
table policing. In some cases, including Detroit, and Prince
George’s County (MD), there was no publicly available out-
come-based improvement (Chanin 2017). e same appears to
be true in New Orleans, where the DOJ intervened in 2013 to
address the use of force-related violations and other problems. In
a 2023 ling, DOJ aorneys asserted that ‘NOPD ocers have
used unjustied force, engaged in dangerous pursuits, and failed
to justify pat-downs’, while remaining out of compliance with
‘key sections of the Decree’ (2023, para. 7).
Other jurisdictions show clearer signs of progress. In Seale,
a quantitative analysis conducted by the DOJ’s independent
monitor team showed that both the incidence of unlawful use
of force and racialized trac stops declined during the 7-year
federal oversight period (Seale Police Monitor 2022). e
author of a recent case study concluded that ‘substantive, sus-
tainable reform has been achieved as the result of the adoption
of the federal Consent Decree between the City of Seale and
the USDOJ’ (Rosenthal 2021: 10). A series of reports issued by
the ND Corporation showed comparable positive eects in
Cincinnati: DOJ intervention correlated with improvement in
key outcomes over the 5 years that oversight was in place (Ridge-
way 2009; Chanin 2015, 2017).
According to monitors overseeing the reform eort in Balti-
more, where federal intervention began in the aermath of Fred-
die Gray’s police-involved death, 'Baltimore Police Department
(BPD) ocers used force substantially less frequently in 2020
and 2021 compared to 2018. e number of force incidents
in which BPD ocers were involved declined by nearly 54.7%
from 2018 to 2021 – from 1,525 total force incidents in 2018
to 691 in 2021’ (Baltimore Consent Decree Monitoring Team
2022: 8). Similar descriptive data from Pisburgh, Los Ange-
les, and Washington, DC, and others, show gains made during
the reform process (Chanin 2015, 2017; Phillips and Jiao 2017;
Rushin 2017).
And yet, a sizable body of evidence shows that aected juris-
dictions have diculty either institutionalizing reforms or sus-
taining outcome gains made during the oversight period. Several
departments, including Pisburgh (Chanin 2017; Stolberg
2017), Washington, D.C. (Oce of the District of Columbia
Auditor 2021), Cincinnati (Akinnibi 2021), and the State of
New Jersey (Ross 2023), have experienced substantive backslid-
ing. In each instance, promising early changes gave way to the
status quo ante shortly aer the DOJ terminated the selement.
With this reality in mind, authors of a 2017 paper examining the
eects of paern-or-practice reform on the incidence of Section
1983 litigation found a ‘modest’ reduction in federal civil rights
lings during DOJ oversight but concluded that the benets
‘may not last in the long term’ (Powell et al. 2017: 594).
To our knowledge, no evaluation of reforms designed to
strengthen police-community relations exists. Available survey
results highlight the complexity of public opinion on the police
and the importance of community support for developing and
sustaining police organizations that embody equity, constitu-
tionality, and eectiveness—principles at the center of the pat-
tern-or-practice initiative. As is the case with the outcome data,
these survey data produce inconsistent and nuanced results. In
Puerto Rico, for example, respondents were divided on issues of
trust and condence in the police, while a sizable majority had
negative views of the department’s ability to manage the civilian
complaint process or discipline ocers eectively (Puerto Rico
TCA Community and Survey 2012). A similar perspective is
characterized by community surveys of residents in Cleveland,
Newark, Seale, Portland, and Baltimore. ese data also make
clear that Black respondents, on balance, hold pessimistic views
of the police relative to White survey takers. Notably, many of
these responses were gathered in the wake of George Floyd’s
murder, a period of police-community tension across much of
the USA. Other responses were elicited during or shortly aer
the Covid-related lockdown, an event that may have aected
people’s trust in the government and views of public safety (Gal-
lup 2021; Chenane et al. 2024). Regardless, it is dicult to read
these survey data and conclude that the consent decree process
has strengthened police-community relations in aected juris-
dictions.
Why we do not know more about paern-or-practice
Paern-or-practice investigations are dicult to study despite
their long-standing use and practical implications for policing
and organizational reform. First, experts simply do not have the
necessary data needed to conduct high-quality impact evalua-
tion of either specic reforms or the initiative generally. A federal
use-of-force reporting mandate, for example, would facilitate the
development of a national database. Years worth of agency-level
use-of-force data would provide a resource for paern-or-prac-
tice researchers and DOJ sta alike. Scholars could conduct pre/
post impact evaluation, while the DOJ could rely on publicly
available data to identify potential intervention candidates, eval-
uate progress during a reform, or develop an objective means of
determining whether selement termination is appropriate.
Second, even in the absence of sound data infrastructure, the
DOJ has not placed enough emphasis on process or impact eval-
uations to assess the ecacy of existing paern-or-practice ini-
tiatives. A lack of commitment on this front creates a signicant
gap in knowledge about how the initiative works, which individ-
ual components are eective, or the extent to which each con-
tributes to the several goals that drive the reform process. is is
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4 • Z. A. Powell and J. Chanin
unacceptable. ere is simply no sound reason (at least as far as
we can tell) for this to be the case and even less justication to
move forward under these conditions.
ird, the DOJ states a goal of transforming organizational
culture as a means of mitigating civil rights violations. And
while police culture is elusive and notoriously dicult to change
(Chan 1996; Willis et al. 2007), the DOJ has not done enough
toward this end. ere are no culture-specic components to
any current or former selements and no clear sign in any of
the monitor reports we have reviewed to indicate that cultural
change is actively sought. Further, the DOJ prioritizes sele-
ment components that target specic behaviors (e.g. use of force,
illegal stops/searches) but does not supplement these eorts
with provisions aimed at shiing cultural norms or expectations.
Without spelling out how culture and policy complement one
another, or how technical updates may contribute to desired
normative outcomes, the paern-or-practice program may fall
short. And while we do not have the space to unpack this issue
in detail, regular communication with ocers, union sta, and
other key organizational stakeholders—via focus groups, inter-
views, and surveys—is a good place to start.
Sustainability concerns in paern-or-practice investigations
One of the biggest problems facing paern-or-practice investiga-
tion lies in the sustainability of organizational reform (Hathaway
2019). e DOJ indicates a commitment to changing an organi-
zation, but an agency may show a motivation to meet the terms
of an agreement rather than truly commit to reform (Chanin
2015, 2017). ere are several plausible reasons why the DOJ
reforms may not last.
No ongoing federal involvement
Aer an agreement is terminated, the DOJ and the monitor team
go their separate ways. ere is no justication or capacity to
follow up on an agency’s progress aer oversight ends, and the
legal relationship between the two parties ends via federal order
(Norman 2019). is is consistent with the ‘implementation
equals reformation’ approach we ascribed to the DOJ. In other
words, there is no need to develop post-termination evaluation
infrastructure, contemplate post-termination check-ins, or take
up other measures designed to assess and promote sustainability.
In fairness, the DOJ’s lack of focus on institutionalization
may reect a shortage of available resources. e DOJ’s push to
nd problematic police in other places (i.e. nd something new
rather than revisit something old) or a lack of criteria to justify
revisiting an oending agency, may simply suggest allocating
resources to multiple places is too much for a small federal oce
to manage. e DOJ typically relies on media reports of unlawful
police behavior to target a new agency for investigation (Chanin
2015, 2016; Ostrowe 2020; Walker 2022, 2024) so unless a pre-
viously targeted agency is subjected to a similar level of coverage,
the DOJ may not make another visit. A lack of future visits may
also show a commitment to saying an agency truly completes the
process once the DOJ leaves town.
Complex incentives for aected jurisdictions
Without the external accountability created by the DOJ’s
presence, police departments tend to revert to the status quo
ante (Scheiber et al. 2020). e process has been consistently
opposed by police union leadership (Phoenix Law Enforcement
Association 2023; Walker 2024) and is, at best, a controversial
process among sworn ocers. Front-line and mid-level sta are
subjected to a higher level of scrutiny, more paperwork, and a
perceived shi away from a focus on aggressive crime ghting
(Colton 2023; Johnson and Kennedy 2023). To prevent this
chipping away, agency leadership, elected ocials, and members
of the public require an active commitment to the reform (Stone
et al. 2009; Chanin 2017).
Leadership may avoid negative aention, whether from the
media, police accountability organizations, or the DOJ, as the
most prudent approach to post-reform organizational manage-
ment. Police executives may see ignoring reform processes for
addressing misconduct as a way to align themselves with union
members or get approval from disgruntled ocers (Maguire et
al. 2020). Ocers may minimize problems to avoid unwanted
scrutiny. Occam’s Razor may also apply here: reverting to pre-re-
form status quo represents the path of least resistance, where
police go back to doing what is most familiar, comfortable, and
eective in their eyes.
ere may also be a nancial reality that helps explain the
shi in jurisdictions’ priorities aer the selement is terminated.
Paern-or-practice reform is a costly, time-consuming process,
running into tens of millions of dollars in some jurisdictions
over the course of several years (Hathaway 2019). Allocation of
these funds is a necessary precondition of any selement with
the DOJ, which is at least part of the reason why police chiefs
and other reform advocates have lobbied the DOJ to intervene
in their departments (PERF 2013). Yet, when local politicians
are no longer legally required to support the police reform eort,
those funds are likely spent elsewhere.
If cities choose to cut supplemental funding for reform, agen-
cies may lack the bandwidth to sustain existing wide-ranging pro-
grams, such as extensive ocer training, community outreach, or
ongoing program evaluation while balancing core crime-ghting
and emergency management missions. Unsustained reform may
reect a lack of sucient nancial support rather than a deliber-
ate eort to allow old problems to resurface. erefore, creative
means are needed to nancially support police agencies for sub-
stantive eorts to correct ongoing problems and prevent future
issues (Powell and Worrall 2021). Further, to guard against
lapses in organizational trends, the DOJ could alter future agree-
ments by mandating the annual release of data and analysis rel-
evant to the reform. Such reporting may require departments to
document sustainability eorts and allow a police agency to state
whether the city continues to fund the agency at an appropriate
level.
Police leadership, hiring, and retention
Successful implementation and institutionalization of pat-
tern-or-practice reform calls upon mid- and upper-level man-
agement to exhibit both leadership and a commitment to the
principles driving the changes (Chanin 2015; Walker 2024).
e experience of managing a comprehensive reform is valuable
in the marketplace so other police agencies may be incentivized
to poach administrators to improve their own departments.
Whatever the reason, high levels of sta turnover may contribute
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Reforming ‘paern-or-practice’ police reform • 5
to a ‘brain drain’ eect, leaving the reformed department need-
ing to replace valuable sta. Moreover, the loss of administra-
tive leaders may create a gap in institutional knowledge within
a department and risks the loss of mentorship of and inuence
over line ocers. To the extent this is true, one might expect
leadership decits to negatively aect sustainability, as personnel
churning may impact the nascent organizational culture devel-
oping around new reforms.
A related maer involves focusing on the retention and recruit-
ment of line ocers (Adams et al. 2023). Consent decrees are
invasive and transform a wide array of organizational practices
that may push some ocers to seek employment elsewhere. Pro-
spective candidates may prefer not to work under the rigors of
a consent decree or deal with the scrutiny that characterizes its
aermath. Current sta may look to transfer to another depart-
ment for similar reasons. In either case, this may hamper agency
stang over the short and long term.
Police departments may be forced to adjust their recruitment
policies to get more candidates through an academy. Some evi-
dence suggests agencies relax educational aspects of an appli-
cation, forgive past marijuana use, or accept candidates with
limited criminal backgrounds (Davies et al. 2024). Agencies
forced to adjust recruiting standards may enlist less than pre-
ferred candidates which, consequently, may lead to less than
desirable outcomes within the agency. Recruitment and reten-
tion issues related to paern-or-practice investigations deserve
robust empirical aention from scholars.
e ocer union
DOJ oversight ends once an independent monitor believes an
agency substantially complied with consent decree require-
ments for two consecutive years. e paperwork generated by
the consent decree creates a series of restrictions on police oper-
ations in terms of documentation and practices that may be per-
ceived as cumbersome. Some of the mandates set by the consent
decree may be discarded if they are perceived to overly restrict
the crimeghting mission. From an administrator’s perspective,
removing red tape associated with the consent decree increases
the agility of an organization and could improve morale among
sworn and non-sworn personnel. erefore, part of the sustain-
ability issues may lie in an administrator’s willingness to remove
‘pesky’ requirements for personnel at the cost of organizational
reforms imposed by a consent decree.
Any DOJ intervention creates fundamental changes in orga-
nizational practice due to updated policies, widespread training
initiatives, and restrictions on job duties. e consent decree
requirements create new workplace conditions that in some cases
have created tension with police unions during the negotiation
phase of a consent decree (Rushin 2014; Chanin 2017). Many of
the changes, however, may become permissible to union mem-
bership (perhaps reluctantly) because an agency must comply
with the federal government. Once a police department frees
itself from DOJ oversight, the workplace conditions imposed by
a consent decree may no longer receive the same support from
the union. Instead, union personnel may push management to
rethink agency practices to support worker rights and improve
workplace conditions. At some point, negotiations between
management and a union may compromise old consent decree
mandates and contribute to the lack of consent decree sustain-
ab i lit y.
It would behoove the DOJ and agency executives to work
together with union leaders where possible, both before and
during the reform eort. Co-opting members of the union may
generate both ownership over the process and a stake in insti-
tutionalizing change. Doing so may also help spread the cost of
failure, creating increased incentives for all parties to promote
sustainability.
Most questions surrounding the sustainability of a consent
decree treat things as binary (i.e. sustained v. not sustained).
While useful for understanding whether paern-or-practice
initiatives ‘work’, the reality of sustainment may contain a few
wrinkles. Some police agencies, for example, may continue some
practices while kning o others based on their perceived di-
culty to maintain, return on investment, or relevance to the agen-
cy’s mission. Sustainability research should focus on developing
a nuanced understanding of law enforcement maintenance of
some reforms more than others.
Community relationships
Police agencies should strive for strong police-community rela-
tions. is is particularly important in jurisdictions that have
seen police violence or experienced a history of racially dispa-
rate enforcement. During the Obama Administration, the DOJ
began using the paern-or-practice initiative to bring the police
closer to their service population. Since many consent decrees
have required police to eld community surveys, solicit input
from its jurisdiction, and/or devise civilian review boards to
oversee law enforcement operations.
Laudable as they are, several factors complicate these eorts.
Paern-or-practice initiatives reveal long-standing unconstitu-
tional practices that may conrm community suspicions towards
a particular agency and arm a police department’s illegitimacy.
Without strong civilian perceptions of police legitimacy (Sun-
shine and Tyler 2003; Tyler 2003, 2004; Gill et al. 2014; Chan et
al. 2023), an agency may face strong headwinds when aempt-
ing to repair community relationships.
Undoing the harm associated with prevalent negative ai-
tudes poses a signicant barrier to police agencies, especially
when required to improve community relationships during
the consent decree process (Marenin 2016; Roche et al. 2016;
Fine et al. 2018, 2021, 2022; Peyton et al. 2019; Picke et al.
2022). Indeed, repeat negative encounters with police may,
in part, aract the DOJ’s aention and activate the consent
decree process. Although one can improve the perceived legit-
imacy of police through procedural justice principles during
police–civilian interactions (Lind and Tyler 1988; Tyler 2003;
Mazerolle et al. 2013; Worden and McLean 2017; Wood et al.
2020; Chan et al. 2023; Bolaji and Metcalfe 2024), these eorts
require repeated positive interactions with law enforcement.
Without multiple positive doses, it may prove unfeasible to
reshape a community’s feelings toward a department in a short
period of time. Moreover, repairing a police department’s image
in the community’s eyes diers from other consent decree
requirements (e.g. updating use-of-force policy to remain in
compliance with state laws). Technical aspects are easy to
benchmark and measure and take less convincing for agencies
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6 • Z. A. Powell and J. Chanin
to assert compliance with a mandate. Improving community
views toward a department, however, may present a signicant
challenge for police departments.
Opinions about police are informed by past or vicarious
experiences with law enforcement (Skogan 2006; Picke et al.
2022; Oppenheim et al. 2024) and one’s ideas of a particular
police department may be indistinguishable from a global idea
of police. Or, in the case of protests against law enforcement, one
might expect negative scrutiny of police, albeit temporary, and
loud, might produce a historical eect that disrupts any commu-
nity survey mandated by a consent decree (Rushin and Edwards
2016; Shjarback et al. 2017; Chanin and Sheats 2018; Capellan
et al. 2020; Marier and Fridell 2020; Powell 2023). erefore,
monitoring reports should account for historical eects that
might dampen a police department’s diligent eorts to repair
community relationships by including analysts to routinely
review community survey data.
DISCUSSION
is paper has taken a close look at the paern-or-practice
reform initiative, marshaling empirical evidence, and scholarly
analysis to draw conclusions about where the process is eective,
where there is room for progress and concrete steps we see help-
ing to drive improvement.
Many of the technical assistance leers point out unlawful pat-
terns of racial discrimination with respect to the use of force, stops,
and searches of personnel (Rushin 2013; Chanin 2015; D’Souza
et al. 2019). Correcting this behavior is important and reects the
DOJ’s commitment to equitable policing practices. Yet, despite the
emphasis on racial discrimination issues, many of the suggested
remedies appear race-neutral in practice (Wheeler 2020; Welsh et
al. 2021). Rather than providing blanket solutions designed to limit
racial discrimination, agencies may adapt by explicitly acknowledg-
ing potential problems and ensuring racial equity remains a focal
point of a law enforcement agency’s performance. To increase the
transparency of police activities, law enforcement may also benet
by discussing practiced tactics to ght crime and using data to illus-
trate the ecacy of these initiatives (Boehme et al. 2024).
Outside of a renewed focus on racial justice issues, the train-
ing and reforms recommended by the DOJ should be updated
to align with the available evidence base. Popular reforms such
as de-escalation (Todak and James 2018; Engel et al. 2020;
White et al. 2021; Engel and Corsaro et al. 2022; Engel and
Isaza et al. 2022) or social interaction training (McLean et
al. 2020, 2022; Wolfe et al. 2020a, 2022) lack strong empir-
ical bases to warrant widespread use. Indeed, some empiri-
cal evidence suggests strong organizational policy may serve
as the best tool to limit misconduct (Fyfe 1979, 1981, 1988;
Fyfe and Walker 1990; White 2000, 2001, 2003; Jennings and
Rubado 2017; Jetelina et al. 2020). Outside of policy, police
departments must oversee ocer behaviors and review ques-
tionable incidents to deter problematic police actions (McEl-
vain and Kposowa 2008; Ridgeway 2020; Ouellet et al. 2022).
In other words, one way to limit the occurrence of police mis-
conduct relies on the restraint of discretion (Walker 1993) and
organizational commitment to correcting wrongful behaviors.
e black box of DOJ investigations can come across as arbi-
trary given that decisions to investigate and compel reform do
not follow clear benchmarks to establish a paern-or-practice
of police misconduct. Ambiguity allows for broad discretion in
decision-making which, curiously, is oentimes one of the chief
problems identied by the DOJ in targeted agencies. By exten-
sion, the ambiguity of a ‘paern’ also leads to uncertainty regard-
ing an agency’s ability to repair the paern and, consequently,
delay or extend the monitor oversight period. To be sure, DOJ
investigations oen note that a small fraction of ocers are
responsible for most of the agency’s problems, and there are sev-
eral examples of awful police misconduct presented in ndings
reports. However, without a clear method for articulating when
and if an agency has allowed organizational misconduct to run
rampant, the classication of a ‘paern’ of misconduct and the
process of repairing such behavior remains open to interpreta-
tion. At the same time, establishing a clear bright line for iden-
tifying widespread organizational misconduct is not necessarily
a one-size-ts-all endeavor, given the diversity of aected agen-
cies, communities, and relevant circumstances. Eective bench-
marking eorts will account for these dierences across space
and time.
In theory, the solution is simple: set clear and measurable
objectives that classify long-standing organizational miscon-
duct and strengthen the DOJ’s push for agency transformation.
Yet, despite the intuitiveness of this approach, lile data exist
to establish baselines to distinguish between ‘problem’ agen-
cies and all others. erefore, the DOJ should solicit feedback
from police professionals, researchers, and community groups
to outline a clear set of standards that police departments can
follow and allow for the DOJ to justify their intervention pow-
ers. To facilitate the collection and publication of these data,
and to oer beer pre/post evaluation of paern-or-practice
initiatives, the DOJ should work with the National Institute of
Justice (NIJ) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to deter-
mine best practices in accountable policing and to incentivize
this behavior. With these data, the DOJ can establish clear and
measurable outcomes and allow for a nuanced interpretation
of agency performance. ese eorts should be implemented
early in the reform process so that the best available data allow
the DOJ to check its performance. A federally driven require-
ment that state and local police collect and make public key
indicators of police misconduct would be a strong initial step.
Use of force would be a great place to start, as force-related alle-
gations drive a majority of paern-or-practice investigations.
ough aligning use-of-force denitions and managing data
from thousands of organizations may prove to be a challenge,
this is not out of reach. e statutory means already exists—
Section 14142 charges the DOJ with ‘acquir[ing] data about
the use of excessive force by law enforcement ocers’, as does
a practical example: NIBRS. Aligning use-of-force denitions
and managing the development of a manipulable, publicly
available database would take some time and insight from
experts, but this should be low-hanging fruit. e DOJ would
have a tool to identify struggling agencies, provide technical
assistance when and where necessary, and source material to
help justify an eventual formal investigation.
Using these kinds of publicly available data to substanti-
ate an investigation would provide a measure of transparency
to a part of the process that remains opaque and inaccessible
(Chanin 2017). Such a database would also provide analysts
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Reforming ‘paern-or-practice’ police reform • 7
with data to complete the type of high-quality large-n assess-
ment that the program needs. It also is worth considering
whether the DOJ would benet from developing a more formal
relationship with interested state DOJ oces (Hathaway 2019;
Mazzone and Rushin 2020). Such an arrangement would allow
state-level oces to benet from federal insight and experience
in pursuing their own paern-or-practice style cases, as Walker
and Macdonald (2008) advise. It would also facilitate state-
to-federal information sharing, potentially expanding federal
knowledge of certain situations and expanding the overall
capacity to screen potential investigation candidates. Yet, as
part and parcel of this process, agencies oen do not publicize
these data willingly, so the eort to collect these data depends
on widespread cooperation from police agencies. Beyond
applying these requirements to all future agreements, we urge
the DOJ to prescribe and explicate the use of these provisions
and dissemination of their results. Specically, the DOJ should
emphasize the importance of a thorough, high-quality review
of relevant data by an independent expert. All evaluators
should be unaliated with the aected department and hold
an established record of subject maer and statistical exper-
tise. Further, there should be the expectation that evaluations
should occur annually throughout the entirety of the oversight
process and beyond. e goal should be to provide objective
assessment of individual reform components while institution-
alizing the expectation that regular, independent evaluation is
to be consistently available over the long term, regardless of
which party controls the city council, whether the police chief
is supportive of the reform, or any other exogenous factors that
might make evaluation more or less popular or convenient.
Among other benets, this type of consistent assessment of
the use of force, trac and pedestrian stop enforcement, and
so on, will provide stakeholders with a means of evaluating the
department and the state of the reform.
As part of the agency’s myriad changes, police agencies might
view intervention as a way to introduce a turning point (Laub
and Sampson 1993; Bacon 2022) to implement organizational
justice principles (Greenberg 2009). In particular, the paern or
practice method may erode interactional justice (Bies and Moag
1986). Or, due to changes to many processes within the agency,
procedural justice may suer as the new changes seem arbitrary,
inconsistent, or biased toward ocer duties (Lind and Tyler
1988). However, given that the DOJ focuses on civilian-related
outcomes, the organizational climate of police agencies receives
lile empirical aention (despite the DOJ’s commitment to
organizational transformation).
Agencies should work to improve the perceptions of the
organizational justness of the agency if the DOJ remains com-
mied to agency transformation. Some research suggests o-
cers who report higher levels of organizational justice report
more engagement and commitment to the agency, commit less
misconduct, and are generally satised with their work (Wol fe
and Piquero 2011; Rosenbaum and McCarty 2017; Fridell et
al. 2021; Piotrowski et al. 2021). Police culture shis with new
forms of landscapes and may be sustained if the police agency
incorporates reective components in the new training man-
dated by the consent decree (Christopher 2015; Bacon 2022).
However, since the DOJ prefers outcome-based measures and
does not assess organizational climate during its investigation
process, it is nearly impossible to track organizational mood
throughout the duration of a consent decree. If the DOJ truly
wants to transform police–civilian relationships to limit pat-
terns of misconduct, then much more aention should be paid
to the perceived organizational climate as new policies and
practices are implemented. As part of a new research agenda on
this topic, scholars could look to adapt previously veed orga-
nizational cultural measures for the policing context (e.g. Klin-
gle et al. 1995; Dawson et al. 2011; Ghosh and Srivastava 2014;
Cordner 2017; Paesen et al. 2019; Gutschmidt and Vera 2020).
In failing to engage on the issue of ocer culture, the DOJ
risks overlooking a set of factors that help determine whether
reforms are institutionalized or allowed to erode. erefore,
DOJ intervention creates an opportunity to unpack the rela-
tionship between organizational management, ocer culture,
and systemic misconduct, as well as how culture contributes to
an organization’s tendency toward either sustainability or rever-
sion (Holmes 2013).
Independent of the organization’s climate issues, there is
ample opportunity to broaden the research agenda for police
agencies. For example, the high visibility and impact of a con-
sent decree showcase unlawful behavior and the DOJ’s willing-
ness to investigate and intervene in a police agency. To some
degree, the DOJ might view this as an act of general deterrence
(Nagin 2013) to instigate other departments to seek organiza-
tional and operational changes in pursuit of accountable, dem-
ocratic policing goals (DOJ 2017: 81). Scholars, then, should
explore whether news of prolonged DOJ interventions pro-
motes organizational reform in other agencies in an aempt to
ward o a possible future investigation. Alongside these issues,
state legislatures could consider ways to expand the footprint of
paern-or-practice reform by taking the initiative to investigate
and intervene in their own departments (Walker and Macdonald
2008; Hathaway 2019). Pursuing this approach, then, might rep-
resent a way to expand the reach of the program and increase the
incidence of proactive, collaborative reform (Reinert et al. 2021).
e DOJ might also consider using its grantmaking capacity to
incentivize departments along these lines. Many police agencies
receive additional nancial assistance from their municipality
to support compliance with consent decrees (Hathaway 2019).
Although these funds are intended to support reform, there may
be spillover eects in other police operations as agencies are now
granted more exibility with their budgets to support standing
initiatives. Fund exibility may allow departments to beer ser-
vice outstanding debts, invest in evidence-based crime preven-
tion strategies, or push for technological advancements in the
eld. e goal, then, is to observe how police agencies, acting
as political entities, allocate internal budgets before, during, and
aer DOJ interventions (Rushin and Michalski 2020; Simonson
2020).
As discussed in this paper, there is ample opportunity to
improve the consent decree process so that agencies can meet
expectations and relieve the burdens of undergoing organiza-
tional change. While some of these diculties are known and
discussed, many more may lurk beneath the surface. Evaluations,
both process and impact, are imperative to rening the DOJ’s
approach and police reform generally. Without evidence evinced
by evaluation, it becomes too easy to make poor policing policy.
Conict of interest. None declared.
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8 • Z. A. Powell and J. Chanin
FUNDING
None declared.
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