Dr. Matthew S Crow

In the wake of several recent high-profile incidents involving police shootings, public interest in and demand for police body-worn cameras (BWC) has reached new heights. Following the release of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing that concluded there is a role for technology to play in building trust and accountability, President Obama requested $75 million in new federal spending to help pay for 50,000 BWCs. Police departments around the country are quickly adopting BWCs, despite a relative dearth of information regarding community or officer perceptions of the costs and benefits of this technology. Pilot studies in the UK and US are suggestive that BWCs can potentially reduce the prevalence of police use-of-force and complaints against officers (Goodall, 2007; Ariel & Farrar, 2013; White, 2013) and a survey of officers in central Florida suggests officers are generally supportive of the technology (Jennings et al., 2014). In order to increase knowledge in this area, this poster reports findings from two waves of officer and resident surveys conducted in two distinct jurisdictions.

The Post-Conviction Risk Assessment Tool (PCRA) was designed in 2009 for use by U.S. Probation to determine the risk of recidivism for individuals on federal probation and supervised release. The PCRA is used to make supervision decisions and is designed to focus on and help implement treatment interventions based on the risk, needs, and responsivity principle. Although several studies have validated the PCRA as a risk assessment tool, no known research has yet examined the perceptions of U.S. Probation Officers, who are tasked with using the tool, about the PCRA. The current study uses survey data from a sample of U.S. Probation Officers across seven districts to assess PO perceptions.