Civilian Review Board Analysis

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A civilian review board is an effort to control police behavior by establishing an exteral form of review for allegations of police misconduct. Police departments have implemented these boards in order to investigate complaints against the police. However, department investigate complaints themselves usually. Citizen input in these review boards can be traced to the Progressive Era (1890-1913). The discussion about the civilian review board has been broken down into three time periods, which are known as the “climates of opinion.” The late 1950s and 1960s, known as the first era, is when different forms of the civilian review board were first suggested. They were aggressively opposed by the police because they were politically contentious.…show more content…
In this board, they discussed the development of policies and procedures in consultation with the chief of police and approval of the police budget. A chief investigator was also appointed in order to coordinate the investigation of complaints and punitive actions of the department. The 1980s and the 1990s was established as the third era of the civilian review board. During this era, the establishment of the review procedures came about. Departments began to make improvements to the internal investigations of citizen complaints. The limitations of the civilian review boards is that forming a review board is assumed that it will be more effective and reasonable than investigations internally by the police. However, the inadequate amount of research does not back this assumption. Other limitations of civilian review are that it is too far removed from the day-to-day existence of the line officer to understand and respond to the dynamics of illegal behavior, civilian review can take away opportunities for the immediate supervisor to deal creatively with problems, and civilian review tend to discourage the use of internal socialization processes.

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