Building Trust in a Reformed Security Sector a Field Experiment in Liberia

Building Trust in a Reformed Security Sector a Field Experiment in Liberia

Working paper June 2016 Robert Blair*, Sabrina Karim†, Benjamin Morse‡ Building trust in a reformed security sector A field experiment in Liberia 1. Executive summary Beginning in June 2014, we conducted a randomised impact evaluation of the “confidence patrols” programme in rural Liberia, a community policing project implemented through the newly-created Regional Justice and Security Hubs. The Hubs are designed to decentralise security and justice provision in rural areas. The objective of the confidence patrols programme is to raise awareness about the Hubs, increase citizens’ understanding of the role of the police and courts and of Liberian law more generally, reduce the incidence of crime and violence, and enhance trust in the police and government. Together with the Ministry of Justice and the Liberian National Police (LNP), we identified a sample of 74 eligible communities in Bong, Lofa and Nimba Counties, and randomly selected 36 to receive confidence patrols. Police officers visited each of these communities on average three times over a 14 month period. We conducted a population-based survey three months after the last patrol to evaluate the programme’s effects. We find the programme had strong salutary effects on the security of property rights - an important result given the continued prevalence of land disputes in rural Liberia, and the persistent threat of violence that they pose. The programme also increased knowledge of the police, particularly of the Hubs themselves; reduced the incidence of simple assault and domestic violence; and increased * Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, robert [email protected] † Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Emory University, [email protected] ‡ Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, MIT, [email protected] When citing this paper, please use the title and the following reference number: S-51111-LIB-1 Ideas for growth www.theigc.org Working paper June 2016 (self-reported) usage of the police and courts for some of the most serious types of crimes, though these latter effects are more muted. The programme had substantively small and statistically insignificant effects on most other outcomes. We plan to disseminate our findings through an IGC policy memo and an academic paper, as well as through presentations to the Ministry of Justice, LNP and other stakeholders in Liberia. We also plan to incorporate additional non-survey data into our analysis (i.e. LNP crime reports and qualitative data), and to conduct additional analysis on the mechanisms through which the programme strengthened property rights, increased reporting and reduced crime. 2. Motivation Restoring the rule of law is a prerequisite for economic development in countries recovering from civil war. Rule of law ensures security of property rights, builds confidence among businesses and investors, and provides reliable, transparent mechanisms for resolving disputes without recourse to violence. Rule of law also helps protect the rights of women and other historically marginalised groups by, for example, increasing reporting and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence - crimes that are often neglected in post-conflict settings. In countries such as Liberia, however, restoring the rule of law is a challenging and sometimes impossible task. Citizens often do not know how to contact the police or access the courts, and many assume that seeking redress to grievances through state security and justice sector institutions will prove prohibitively expensive. Many also fear that wartime patterns of corruption and abuse will persist into peacetime. As a result, victims often choose to bypass the police and courts altogether, relying instead on illegal or extra-judicial mechanisms of dispute resolution (e.g. lynchings, mob justice and trial by ordeal). These mechanisms are idiosyncratic and often biased against women and ethnic or religious minorities. Unpredictability and discrimination create a hostile environment for investment in property, business and human capital at both the micro and macro levels, stifling development and exacerbating the risk that conflict will recur. Despite the importance of rule of law for economic growth, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of specific policies designed to increase civilians’ access to, trust in, and compliance with state security and justice sector institutions. While scholars have considered mechanisms for building trust in the police and courts in the US, lessons learned from this literature may not generalise to countries overcoming legacies of civil strife. And while a number of studies have explored ”best practices” in post-conflict security and justice sector reform, few have addressed whether or how these reforms affect the relationships between civilians and state institutions. Moreover, these studies are almost all observational, and tend to rely on anecdotal or purely qualitative evidence alone. 2 Working paper June 2016 In this report we assess whether recurring randomised patrols by elite, newly-retrained units of Liberian National Police (LNP) officers can increase trust in the police, reduce crime and violence, and enhance security of property rights in rural communities. Ours is one of just a small handful of programme evaluations conducted in collaboration with state security sector personnel in the developing world.1 Our goal is not to only to contribute to the academic literature on rule of law and security sector reform, but also to inform policymaking in Liberia at an especially crucial moment, as the UN mission prepares to withdraw and as the government extends its presence into rural areas long accustomed to state absence or abuse. 3. Background The confidence patrols programme Despite over a decade of reform, many Liberians continue to perceive the country’s security and justice sectors as corrupt, inaccessible and ineffective. In an attempt to mitigate this problem, the Liberian government has established five Regional Justice and Security Hubs at strategic locations throughout the country. Each Hub hosts deployments from the police, courts and Bureau of Immigration and Naturalisation. With improved infrastructure and better-trained, better-equipped personnel, the Hubs constitute an unprecedented increase in the quantity and quality of justice and security provision in rural Liberia. The Hubs are widely considered the cornerstone of the government’s efforts at security sector reform, and a prerequisite for the UN’s withdrawal. To raise awareness of the Hubs, the government also instituted a “confidence patrols” programme through which teams of 10-15 officers from the Police Support Unit (PSU) - an elite subunit of the LNP - travel to towns and villages throughout rural Liberia to demonstrate the LNP’s improved capacity and “sensitise” citizens to increased police presence in and around their communities. During each patrol, PSU officers distributed informational posters about the Hubs; held public meetings to discuss issues related to justice and security with local leaders and residents; and circulated throughout the community to interact with citizens and solicit reports of crime and violence (see Figures 1 and 2). Each patrol typically lasted several hours; in more distant communities, the patrolling officers often spent the night. 1. Banerjee et al. (2012) evaluate reforms implemented in randomly-selected police stations in Rajasthan, India, including weekly duty rosters and a freeze on inter-station transfers [1]. One of the authors of this study (Karim) evaluates the effects of home visits by teams of police officers in Liberia, randomly varying the sex composition of the teams. Two of the authors (Blair and Karim) use lab-in-the-field experiments to test the effects of gender and ethnic balancing on cooperation and discrimination among teams of LNP officers, though these studies are not programme evaluations per se. 3 Working paper June 2016 Figure 1: PSU officers hold a public meeting Public meetings were an important component of the programme. Common topics of discussion included land disputes, familial disputes, domestic violence, police corruption, accessibility of the police, and use of the courts. 4. Expectations We expected the programme to increase knowledge of the police (including the Hub) and Liberian l aw. 2 With its emphasis on community policing, we also expected the programme to improve perceptions of the police, and potentially of the government more generally. As a signal of the LNP’s increasing capacity, we also expected the programme to reduce the incidence of crime and violence, increase reporting to the police and reduce reliance on illegal or extrajudicial mechanisms. Finally, we expected increased police presence to reassure landowners, and thus to improve security of property rights. We estimate the effects of the programme on eight “clusters” of outcomes. Specifically, we expect the programme to: 2. Our expectations and research design are summarised in our pre-analysis plan, registered with the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network 4 Working paper June 2016 1. Increase knowledge of the police 2. Increase knowledge of Liberian law more generally 3. Improve perceptions of the police 4. Improve perceptions of the government more generally 5. Reduce the incidence of crime and violence 6. Increase reliance on the police when incidents of crime and violence occur 7. Reduce reliance on

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