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National Data Collection on Police Use of Force
This discussion paper, published jointly with the National
Institute of Justice, summarizes prior research on police use
of force and lists the difficulties inherent in collecting
use-of-force data, including definitional problems, reluctance
of police agencies to provide reliable data, concerns about the
misapplication of reported data, and the degree of detail needed
on individual incidents. It also discusses alternative
approaches to data collection and sources of data, including
official records, surveys of police, and surveys of citizens.
The paper concludes that it will be some time before a national
reporting program is implemented. In the meantime two pilot
programs are collecting data on use of force: an expansion of
the BJS National Crime Victimization Survey to include questions
about use of force and a grant to the International Association
of Chiefs of Police for the first phase of a four-phase program
to establish a national database to collect incident reports on
use of force from police departments. This report was prepared
by Tom McEwen of the Institute for Law and Justice. 5/96 NCJ 160113
Acrobat file (301K) | ASCII text file (118K)
To order paper version
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