Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

Citizen surveys, long used by researchers to test hypotheses about police-citizen interactions, have recently be deployed as a tool for promoting police reform. This paper examines the citizen survey's potential role in creating more accountable and effective police forces, drawing on examples from Chicago, Illinois; Queens, New York; and St. Petersburg, Russia. The study provided the framework for an international meeting on the use of citizen surveys as a tool for police reform, one of a series of meetings on democratic policing hosted by Vera and supported by the Ford Foundation.