CITIZEN OVERSIGHT

Role of Citizen Oversight in Policing

Role of Citizen Oversight in Policing

Introduction

Citizen oversight refers to the action of a congregation of citizens, in order to consider governmental policies, law, rules and activates that may be considered as misconduct at its end. This congregation may be also representing suggestions, recommendations and solutions for these legal issues. Majority of the issues reported as citizen oversight are related to police activities and its influence over the citizens of a society. Citizen oversight shares similar features with the Jury system and Demarchy. These proposals are being suggested since 1970s. However, those appeals that may be related to governmental corruption and police misconduct has been opposed, oppressed and never gained their attention from authorities.

Citizen oversight of police has rapidly become a popular mechanism for responding to the problem of police officer misconduct. Although there is a great deal of national interest in the role of citizen oversight, relatively little is known about the effect that citizen involvement in the police complaint process has on levels of police complainant satisfaction. The implementation of the citizen-managed process successfully improved levels of satisfaction with the complaint process but had no statistically significant impact on levels of satisfaction with complaint outcomes.

Discussion and analysis

The main reason of building citizen oversight is to provide a mechanism for citizens by whom they can send their suggestion and complaints regarding police officers to a separate body which has no relation with the police department, and it fairly investigate their complaints. In many cases, it has been observed that citizen oversight helps a lot in diffusion of the situation of violence and confusion and strengthens the relationship between citizens and police. In United States, there is a significant increase in citizen oversight of police. Now with the previous experiences, citizens and administration of police should work to reduce conflicts and increase cooperation between police and citizens (Buren, 2006).

Different models of oversight

Oversight models suggested by different peoples more or less same, however, they can be categorized in following different types.

Allegations of misconduct of police investigate by citizens, and they suggest their finding to police administration.

Allegations investigate by a police officer, and they build their findings. Then, citizens give their opinion on these findings for approval or rejection to police administration.

The police department accepts and examines complaints of citizen and a separate check the fairness and thoroughness of the whole process.

Citizen Oversight Effectiveness and Inherent Issus

Lack of Experience

Members of over sight system have no work experience as a police officers, so they face difficulty in determining that police officers involved in misconduct or not. Citizens are not commonly familiar with relevant laws governing behavior of police officer nor do they know the nature of police judgment, the methods engaged in training of officers, or the whole circumstances of an occasion that can persuade behavior of officers (Warlker, 2001).

Officers often argue that medical boards composed on doctors and physicians, and only attorneys examine lawyers for misbehavior. So officers only from law enforcement agencies should be on board to ...