Technology Resource

The 2017 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) Committee and Report on Proactive Policing highlighted what we know about the effects of proactive policing practices on crime prevention and police–community relations. However, the evaluation evidence reviewed by the NAS, which largely comes from case studies of carefully managed proactive initiatives, does not provide a basis for estimating how extensively these practices are used or whether they are used in the most effective ways.

In 2017, the Fairfax County (Virginia) Police Department, known as FCPD, decided to launch a pilot implementation of body-worn cameras (BWCs) to learn what the technology involved, the response of its officers to it, what community members and local organization leaders would think, and the changes in policing practices and outcomes that would occur. Some police agencies in the Metropolitan Washington, DC area had already adopted BWCs and there was a push nation-wide to implement them quickly in the face of numerous high-profile and controversial interactions between police and citizens.

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) have become a popular technology for use in police forces around the world; however, little is known about the effects of this technology on policing and on the criminal justice system more generally. In this article, we discuss reported benefits and limitations of body-worn cameras. We examine the current evidence-base for BWCs and the legislative framework in NSW.

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) represent one of the most important advancements in policing over the past century, and they present formidable challenges on several fronts –community engagement, policy development and implementation, equipment selection and purchase costs, equipment maintenance and storage costs, privacy concerns, training, impacts and coordination across the justice system, program assessment, and more.

Executive Summary: Since 2014, many police agencies have adopted body-worn camera (BWC) programs, in many cases with little to no evidence-base to guide implementation and policy development. The research has expanded significantly since then, with well over 70 articles now published on the topic of BWCs (Lum, Stoltz, Koper, & Scherer, 2019). These studies have identified several benefits of the technology, including increased transparency and legitimacy, expedited resolution of complaints, and evidentiary value for arrest and prosecution.

Author (s) Abstract: In 2016, nearly half (47%) of the 15,328 general-purpose law enforcement agencies in the United States had acquired body-worn cameras (BWCs) (figure 1). By comparison, 69% had dashboard cameras and 38% had personal audio recorders. Findings are based on the 2016 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics - Body-Worn Camera Supplement (LEMAS-BWCS) from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The LEMAS-BWCS was administered for the first time in 2016.

Police legitimacy is generally regarded as a view among community members that police departments play an appropriate role in implementing rules governing public conduct. Placing body-worn cameras (BWCs) on police officers has been suggested as a potentially

The purpose of this paper is to review the extant of the published literature on body-worn cameras (BWCs) in policing, specifically in the context of how BWCs affect both citizens and officers.The current study is a narrative review of the impact of BWCs on police and citizens generated through a search of four repositories (Google Scholar, Criminal Justice Abstracts, EBSCO Host, PsychInfo). The current narrative review identified 21 articles that matched the selection criteria.

In the first article (http://www.routefifty.com/2015/09/police-body-cameramusts/121502/) of our three-part series on widespread deployment of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by law enforcement, we argued that policymakers and law enforcement leaders face a broad and complex set of decisions that must be made now. These vital decisions divide into the same basic categories as most big data or technology policy questions: