Police reform: lessons from CENDEP research

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Richard Carver writes:

George Floyd was tortured to death. This is not how his death is usually described, but it meets the clear definition of torture in international law: it was severe pain and suffering inflicted by a state agent for a deliberate purpose, in this instance racial animus or discrimination. CENDEP’s Lisa Handley and I directed a multi-country study to determine which were the most effective measures to deter torture, published as Does Torture Prevention Work? (Liverpool University Press 2016). Some of our findings have a direct relevance to the problem of police violence against African-Americans.

The most important measures to prevent torture are safeguards in the hours and days after arrest, including detention being recorded, notification of a family member or friend, and prompt access to a lawyer and medical examination. George Floyd was in police custody – defined as being unable to leave freely – and was informed that he was under arrest. The justification for the use of force was that Floyd was resisting arrest, although the videos taken by bystanders show that this was not so.



We observed in many countries that police react to detention safeguards in the police station by ill-treating suspects before they are entered into the detention register, as happened in this case. One way to try to monitor police behaviour outside the station is through the use of cameras, whether CCTV or body cameras. We found that these were not especially effective, primarily because police forces worldwide have a knack of losing relevant footage or having cameras that “malfunction” at the crucial moment. In this instance, police torture was effectively exposed because members of the public filmed what happened. Videos from cellphones have become an increasingly important source of evidence of torture in many countries – but of course cannot provide systematic coverage.

The second most important set of preventive measures, according to our research, was the investigation and prosecution of torturers. This is where many US police departments clearly fall short. Impartial investigation and effective prosecution of police for torture or other ill-treatment are a rarity anywhere in the world. The group ethos of the police makes it very hard to get testimony about torture from other officers and external corroboration is often not available.

In this instance, by contrast, there is ample video evidence. However, the case of Eric Garner, killed by police in New York in 2014 in similar circumstances, does not give grounds for optimism. Despite the existence of video evidence, a grand jury decided not to indict the officer responsible. And in 2019, Attorney General William Barr decided that none of the officers involved in Garner’s death would be prosecuted on federal charges. The officers in both the Garner and Floyd cases have been dismissed from their jobs, but this is inadequate punishment for torture or murder.

This is a massive systemic problem, in a country with thousands of separate police departments, often with civilian oversight bodies exercising less authority than powerful police unions. Hence the increasingly widespread calls to “defund” or “abolish” the police. On 7 June, the Minneapolis city council voted to disband the city’s police department. The issue of radical police reform arose in several of our country case studies. Many of the countries we researched had gone through a period of dramatic transition, from war to peace or from dictatorship to democracy, and had made different choices about how to reform the police. Some, such as Argentina, simply left police departments unreformed after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s. Torture persists to this day.

Two of the countries in our study dissolved their police forces and reconstituted them: Northern Ireland and the republic of Georgia. In both instances, the outcome has been overwhelmingly positive, with cases of police torture decreasing dramatically. The symbolic importance in both cases was a transition in policing style. In Northern Ireland, the change was from a police force with a strong counter-insurgency emphasis to a police service with a community orientation and strong civilian oversight. In Georgia, the shift was from a Soviet-style militia to Western patrol police.

The United States is a massive country with nearly 18,000 police agencies. The experience of these countries cannot be transferred easily, but this would seem to be the right direction if existing police departments are resistant to accountability.