Impact of Your Voice is a campaign that connects you with the authors and researchers whose work is driving meaningful change in society. Through insightful interviews, we uncover the stories behind their research and explore how their ideas are influencing real-world outcomes. From shaping policies to sparking new solutions, these conversations highlight the transformative power of knowledge. Join us for an interview with Cynthia Lum, where she discusses her research on body-worn cameras published in Criminology & Public Policy.

Please can you give us a brief overview of your research?

The 2000s and 2010s marked a period of crisis in American policing, with some police agencies being scrutinized, criticized, and sued over excessive uses of force and deaths in custody (often captured by cellphone footage) against primarily Black men. During this time, both community members and police leaders began to look at body-worn cameras (BWCs) as a potential tool to record police actions, with the hopes of improving accountability and reducing excessive use of force. As BWCs began to be adopted, researchers also became more and more interested in studying whether they were indeed leading to the outcomes the community and police sought. During the 2010s, researchers began examining the impacts of BWCs on officer and citizen behaviors, officer and citizen perceptions and opinions about BWCs, and the impact of cameras on police investigations and other aspects of law enforcement operations. To gain a sense of this growing body of research so to inform policy, my co-authors and I decided to carry out a comprehensive review of all the research that had been done on BWCs, which was published in Criminology & Public Policy. One year later, we published the first meta-analysis and systematic review of the evaluation research on BWCs for Campbell Systematic Reviews (also a Wiley journal). Both reviews revealed that cameras may not necessarily be leading to the outcomes that everyone thought (in terms of reducing use of force or improving police-citizen relationships).

What motivated you to conduct a comprehensive narrative review of body-worn cameras (BWCs)?

Much of my work is motivated by an approach to policing called evidence-based policing (see Lum & Koper, 2017). Evidence-based policing focuses on translating, implementing, and institutionalizing high-quality research findings about police strategies and tactics into police practice, with the goal of improving the ability of the police to prevent crime and improve their work. Often, police carry out tactics or use certain technologies (like BWCs) without either knowing or having some foundation that the tactic or technology will work in the way they expect. And, often with policing technology, there is very little evaluation research that can speak to whether the technology can deliver. However, in the case of BWCs, researchers began evaluating their impacts at the same time as their rapid adoption, leading to a great deal of research knowledge being generated about them. We thought a review of that research would give police organizations, policymakers, and the public a sense of “what we know” about BWCs. We also felt that a review would help to sharpen researchers’ focus on areas or methods of research that were needed to inform policy and practice. The narrative review also helped us sharpen our focus when conducting the meta-analysis one year later.

Can you explain the methodology you used to analyse the 70 empirical studies on BWCs?

In Criminology & Public Policy, we conducted a narrative review of the research, given the wide variation in research methods being used and topics explored. However, in the following systematic review we conducted (Lum et al., 2020 – also published by Wiley), we used meta-analysis, which is a statistical approach designed to analyse and summarize specific findings from a wide variety of research studies. The purpose of both reviews is to gain an overall sense of

what we know about BWCs from a large amount of varied research studies to be able to inform policymakers and practitioners about what we know from the research.

What were the most surprising or unexpected findings from your review?

In the narrative review, we did not see consistent findings that BWCs could reduce the use of force, although BWCs certainly could reduce complaints against officers. At the same time, we discovered that officers were actually more supportive of BWCs than we expected, especially because BWCs were believed by their advocates to be a tool to monitor and hold officers’ accountable. We argued in the paper that officer and citizen beliefs and perceptions about what BWCs could do might not be well-aligned and that both believed the cameras could protect themselves from the other. Further, fears of de-policing from the cameras were not necessarily realized; we did not find consistent evidence that BWCs reduced officers’ use of arrests or proactive activity as some believed they would. We note that many of these findings were reinforced in the 2020 meta-analysis, which provided a more rigorous analysis of some of the key research findings. There was substantial uncertainty about whether BWCs could reduce officer use of force, and that variability may depend on how BWCs were used and monitored.

Why do you think BWCs have not had statistically significant or consistent effects on officer and citizen behaviour or citizens’ views of police?

Decades of research on police technology has taught us that technology is rarely the solution to real challenges that the police face. Ultimately, technology is only a scalpel; it is not the surgeon. In other words, if agencies do not have accountability systems and cultures (for supervision, tracking, monitoring, etc.) in place, then technology will likely not be able to improve that situation because the organizational and technological frames in which the police operate are much stronger than the technology itself. Technology doesn’t shape the police, rather, the police bend technology towards their organizational approaches. As an example, crime analytic technologies can help agencies advance proactive, problem-solving, community-engaged, targeted, and tailored approaches that have been shown from research to be effective in controlling crime and improving police legitimacy (see National Academies of Sciences, 2018). However, if agencies primarily operate in reactive, case-by-case, procedural, general, and non-tailored ways, then crime analytic technologies will be used to support those approaches, not generate new approaches that the agency does not practice. My colleagues and I discuss this in great detail in Lum et al. (2017).

How do you interpret the general support for BWCs among officers and citizens despite the mixed evidence on their effectiveness?

Officers believe BWCs can protect them from frivolous complaints or false accusations by citizens, and often footage is used for that purpose. Police also see BWCs as a tool for criminal investigations. Citizens believe BWCs can protect them from bad behaviour by officers and can record rare events (like an officer-involved shooting) that no one else saw. We argue that such incongruence between officer and citizen beliefs about cameras likely does not help improve trust, confidence, and engagement between police and community members.

What are the key gaps in knowledge regarding the impact of BWCs on police organizations and police–citizen relationships?

We are now engaged in the Campbell Systematic Review follow-up to our 2020 meta-analysis of BWC research. I suspect that we will continue to find a lack of research that has examined whether BWCs can improve police accountability, improve police-community relationships and trust, or detect/reduce officer disparity (or perceived disparity) in their behaviours. I also think the research on BWCs has slowed a bit.

How can police departments maximize the positive impacts of BWCs while minimizing potential drawbacks?

Strictly speaking, from the research, if police agencies want BWCs to reduce excessive or unlawful uses of force, then the research seems to suggest that agencies could have better outcomes in this area if they have clear policies limiting the discretion of when BWCs can be turned on and off and ensure accountability towards those policies. However, I think both the 2019 review and the 2020 meta-analysis point to more important points about how agencies can maximize the positive impacts of BWCs. If BWCs are primarily being used to stop frivolous complaints by citizens or for investigative purposes (to support criminal investigations of suspects), then community members should know and understand this. If the police want to try and improve accountability or community-engagement systems, cultures, and processes, then they have the build and develop those systems, rather than hope that BWCs will be the answer (as technologies rarely are). And, they can use BWCs in ways that strengthen policing practice and skills more broadly (see comments below regarding training).

What specific contexts or conditions make BWCs most beneficial or harmful?

We don’t have enough knowledge yet to determine the specific contexts or conditions that make BWCs most beneficial or harmful. Even after the 2020 meta-analysis, the evidence is not strongly clear about when BWCs can consistently reduce the use of force. We know that they do lead to a reduction in complaints, but whether that reduction is due to improvements in officer behaviour and police-citizen interactions, or whether those reductions are due to the reduction of frivolous complaints is unclear.

How can BWCs be integrated into police training, management, and internal investigations to drive fundamental organizational changes?

Here is where I think BWCs can be very helpful. Like sports coaching, for example, video playback is often used to guide, mentor, coach, or tweak tactics and strategies. BWCs could serve as an important feedback tool for officers who are trying to hone their policing and engagement skills. In this way, the technology could be used not necessarily for disciplinary purposes but more regularly for learning purposes in a more positive learning environment.

Further, BWCs might help researchers and police agencies track, test, and measure police behaviour and procedural justice. Dennis Rosenbaum has recently given an Ideas in American Policing lecture where he has advocated for the use of BWCs to measure officers’ use of procedural justice.

What policy recommendations would you make based on your findings to improve police performance, accountability, and legitimacy?

I would recommend that if police agencies want to strengthen accountability not only to the law but also to their mandates (public safety and police legitimacy), then they need to see BWCs as just a secondary tool in that endeavour. Accountability requires much more than a camera on a shirt; it requires active and transformational supervision, positive mentorship and coaching, high-quality tracking and regular correction of behaviours (in a dynamic learning approach), and constant training, reinforcement, and practice. Jurisdictions have to help by providing police agencies with enough investment and guidance to do these things. Technology itself is not the panacea.

How do you see the role of BWCs evolving in law enforcement over the next decade?

We have already seen BWCs evolve into tools that police use for criminal investigations and to deal with false complaints against them. Whether BWCs will evolve into being used to proactively advance learning, skillsets, mentorship, and accountability depends on if U.S. police agencies will evolve to focus more on these things.

What's next for you in this area of research?

We are currently carrying out the Campbell Systematic Review Meta-analytic Update for Body Worn Cameras, which will include all eligible research since the initial reviews in 2019 and 2020. Perhaps the additional research will paint a different conclusion than what we found in 2020.

 

Lum, C., & Koper, C.S. (2017). Evidence-Based Policing: Translating Research into Practice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Lum, C., Koper, C.S., & Willis, J.J. (2017). Understanding the limits of technology’s impact on police effectiveness. Police Quarterly, 20(2), 135-163.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). Proactive Policing: Effects on Crime and Communities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press