The learning model of use-of-force reviews

Abstract

Since the 1970s, police departments have subjected the use of force by their officers to increasingly stringent oversight, but those efforts have struggled against the difficulty of codifying the complex and idiosyncratic judgments that police work requires. In response, some departments have developed new models of oversight that use routine incident reviews partly as a tool for learning in order to document the continually surprising circumstances that officers encounter in the field, to scrutinize existing responses, and to articulate alternatives. This article analyzes the logic of this emerging model through a case study of use-of-force reviews in the Portland Police Bureau. I argue that this emerging model relies on an approach to practical inquiry that has not been adequately understood in criminal justice scholarship and practice-one that uses the routine review of organizational experience to pursue normative progress as well as technical understanding and that makes it possible to adapt complex policing practices to the local environment in which they operate.