Police use of force: study finds significant reductions through new training

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A new training programme considerably reduces the use of force by police without leading to a rise in harm to officers, a large-scale trial has found.

The study, published in the Justice Evaluation Journal and led by researchers at King's College London and the College of Policing, found the programme led to a 10.9% decrease in the likelihood that police officers used force in a given week, with the biggest reductions seen for "hands-on" uses of force such as restraining someone on the ground, which declined by 14%.

The likelihood of a member of the public being injured by police during a use-of-force incident also fell, by a third, while there was no change in the risk of a police officer being injured.

The trial, which involved 1,843 serving officers in Avon and Somerset Police, evaluated a new national curriculum for public and personal safety training, developed by the College of Policing.

The training is entirely scenario-based and builds on conflict management skills that officers were taught during their initial recruit training, such as de-escalation, risk management, physical restraint and use of personal protective equipment.

An expert reference group reviewed national data to identify the most common circumstances when the police and public came into conflict, and where force may have to be used. These points of conflict were then broadly defined into plausible scenarios for the training.

The scenarios include booking in at custody, attending a domestic incident, attending a fight in the street, performing a stop and search, and dealing with a vulnerable person. Each scenario has multiple levels, and officers repeat the scenarios multiple times over the two-day training course.

Officers are presented with a simple brief of the scenario before they start, and then must deal with the situation that unfolds in front of them. For example, they may receive the following briefing:

"You are called to a residential property following a report from a concerned neighbour about the couple that live there. The neighbour has heard a loud voice shouting, followed by a loud bang and then silence."

As they respond to a mock-up of a house in the training environment, officers may find a bickering couple who are responsive to police requests or a highly aggressive individual, armed with a prop knife, who reports they have just assaulted their partner - or anything in between.

Officers are assessed on how they manage the role-players in front of them, what they do to de-escalate and what justification they have for using force if they choose to do so.

Because the training could not be delivered to all officers in the force at once, it was rolled out gradually, in a "stepped wedge pragmatic controlled" trial, in which a different group of officers are trained every week over the course of a year, until all officers have undergone the programme.

This type of rollout allowed the researchers to compare use of force by those officers who have already been trained in any given week, with the use of force by those who have yet to be trained.

Historical data also meant the study could control for officers' underlying tendency to use force, as well as any seasonal variations.

"These results are hugely encouraging. Our research shows that we can build in evaluation of police training to its rollout in a way that allows us to learn about its effectiveness without compromising operational delivery. "Most importantly, it shows that this training, which is built on conflict-management techniques, is effective in reducing force, without increasing the likelihood that an officer themselves is harmed. We are therefore pleased to see the training being rolled out across forces in England and Wales, helping to address a specific aspect of the urgent need for change in policing."

Michael Sanders, Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Experimental Government Team at King's College London's Policy Institute

Read the full paper

Sanders, M., Bancroft, K., Hume, S., Chetwynd, O., & Quinton, P. (2024). The Impact of Training on Use of Force by Police in an English police force; Evidence from a Pragmatic Stepped Wedge Randomised Controlled Trial. Justice Evaluation Journal, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/24751979.2024.2412333

This study was funded by the College of Policing and supported by the Cabinet Office Evaluator Accelerator Fund.