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• 19 June 2020
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What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work

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For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. This deadly use of force by the now-former Minneapolis police officer has reinvigorated a very public debate about police brutality and racism.

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Nature 583 , 22-24 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01846-z

Updates & Corrections

Update 26 May 2021 : On 20 April 2021, Derek Chauvin was convicted of causing the death of George Floyd. The text has been modified to include updated information on how long Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.

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Increasing Mental Health Literacy in Law Enforcement to Improve Best Practices in Policing—Introduction of an Empirically Derived, Modular, Differentiated, and End-User Driven Training Design

Katharina lorey.

1 Ministry of the Interior, Digitalisation and Local Government of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Stuttgart, Germany

2 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ulm University Medical Center, Ulm, Germany

Jörg M. Fegert

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Objective: Law enforcement officers often have contact to persons who show symptoms of mental disorders. Adequately designed training is necessary for developing the best possible practices in policing when coming into contact with mentally ill people, and may help to expand their general knowledge on mental disorders. To achieve a sustainable implementation of training content in daily policing work, the acceptance and proactive integration of methods by the training participants is essential.

Method: This study investigates an exemplary modular training curriculum based on a survey with 2,228 German police officers (28.2% female, 71.8% male) concerning their needs and challenges when coming into contact with persons with mental disorders. This empirical end-user driven approach was used to adapt existing training concepts to the current needs and interests of law enforcement personnel in order to maximize compliance.

Results: The training program draft includes basic modules which are intended to be of direct interest to all police officers, such as mental disorders with high policing relevance, encountering suicidal patients, (non-directive) communication and de-escalation skills, and mental hygiene in policing. They are arranged in more specialized modules that address specific target group audiences within police forces and the training curriculum provides information about genuine risks and self-protection, trauma sensitivity, and interaction with children and victims among other contents. The self-selectable, modular, and empirically-based continued training program also includes an introduction to local mental health service professionals and networks, trialogue sequences, and situational role play scenarios.

Conclusion: Due to frequent contact law enforcement officers have to mentally ill people, improved training designed to maximize knowledge and the integration of trained methods is necessary. Gaining acceptance and proactive support by trainees is ensured through end-user driven implementation of specialized and differentiated up-to-date training programs. Our results showcase how police officers' perspectives on persons with mental illnesses is a main aspect that can and should be used to encourage training course designs.

Introduction

Multiple studies suggest the necessity of adequate training of law enforcement officers to improve their handling of the frequent contact to mentally ill people ( 1 – 4 ). Police officers are indeed willing to learn about this topic and receive additional training ( 5 , 6 ). We designed a training approach with the aim to improve the interaction between police and person with mental illnesses (PMI) on a qualitative level by surveying police officers' needs and challenges when encountering PMI. Based on these survey results, 1 we developed an exemplary training curriculum with specific suggestions for relevant modules and contents.

In 1987, the 27-year-old Joseph Dewayne Robinson who was known to be mentally ill was shot multiple times by police officers in Memphis Tennessee. This incident caused the development of the Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), the most common training courses within the United States as well as the theoretical background that dates back more than 30 years. Three decades of training thousands of police officers within the United States and internationally (e.g., Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia), have resulted in the dissemination of 2,700 CIT programs in the United States alone ( 7 ). Since its establishment and up until today the main goals of CIT focus on the quality of collaboration between law enforcement, mental health providers, hospital emergency departments, and individuals with mental illness and their families ( 8 ). However, most well-established training concepts have been developed decades ago and need to be updated using recent advancements in research on policing PMI.

Over the last years, new research has broadened the scientific view on mental health issues. For example, modern research approaches the correlation between violence and mental illness from a much more differentiated perspective and puts more emphasis on the importance of contextual factors to explain a potential connection ( 9 ). For police officers, such a differentiated approach can be crucial. When a mentally ill person is not expected to be automatically violent and aggressive, responding behavior may be adjusted and conflicts with potential lethal outcomes could be avoided. New programs such as, “the R-Model” crisis intervention de-escalation training ( 10 ), or the “Training and Education about Mental Illness for Police Organizations”—TEMPO ( 11 ) are in need of integrating the perspectives of their main target groups on challenges and needs, which arise from contacts with persons with mental illnesses: the law enforcement personnel itself ( 1 , 12 , 13 ). CIT programs have been developed especially as a police-based approach to provide first responders to emergency calls with methods to prevent inadequate decision-making, regarding arrest or custody involving a PMI. Furthermore, several programs will shortly be introduced.

Within our approach to this issue, maximizing the acceptance and ensuring the feasibility of training program contents in the eyes of trainees were two main pre-conditions, which we addressed by considering the target group's own training needs and knowledge gaps. Several studies have already pointed out the perspectives of police officers on their interactions with PMI ( 6 , 14 – 16 ), as well as the aspects of frequencies ( 6 ), perceived danger and unpredictability ( 15 , 17 ), and the consequences of lacking mental health literacy or communication skills ( 18 , 19 ). Taking this into account, Thomas and Watson ( 3 ) suggest: “Training should be practical, applied and reinforced.” In our opinion, this paradigm should guide empirically-based approaches to training designs. Hence, the presentation of an example of how practical an applied and reinforced training course could look like in Germany, and potentially in other countries.

According to a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center ( 20 ) in the United States for example, people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement. In addition, the issue received an increasing amount of public and political interest because of lacking mental health services and fatal outcomes of interactions between police and persons with mental illnesses. Addressing this discourse, New York City for example announced that they would initiate a trial program that aims to establish mental crisis response teams outside of the police force in some parts of the city in April 2021 ( 21 ), which signifies the strong demand for adequate public services in this field. The killing of Daniel Prude on March 23, 2020 in Rochester, New York, for example caused widespread outcries and significant criticism directed against the authorities. The fatal outcome of the police encounter in this case called for changes in how law enforcement personnel respond to PMI. This development indicates the pressing need to design updated training courses for police officers reflecting the current scientific understanding of mental illnesses and adequate responses to them. On the other hand, today's challenges and changes in policing work, as well as the significantly increased demands placed on officers in their daily work must be reflected in those trainings as well [e.g., ( 22 )]. Such developments characterize the climate of law enforcement not just in the United States but in many other countries as well.

The presented end-user driven exemplary training course design includes the formulated needs of 2,228 German police officers we previously surveyed. Our main goal for the present study is to provide useful insights for training course development beyond national contexts and potentially relevant modules for policing requirements similar to Germany; where no standardized training on this issue exists for police officers. After several incidents with a fatal outcome involving mentally ill persons, some German states (e.g., Hamburg and Berlin) began to introduce training courses for officers. Whereas, police officers in Hamburg practice encounters with psychotic and bipolar patients in trialogical approaches ( 23 ). Berlin's police officers have the option to participate in a 4-day seminar that includes training sequences, law education and introduces network partners ( 24 ).

Research addressing the evidence of the effectiveness of training programs for police officers must be expanded. In this context, the question of how to define effectiveness (e.g., decreasing numbers of injuries or death and/or the number of successfully admitted patients to a psychiatric facility instead of jail) is controversially discussed. CIT's positive effects mostly focus on police officers' attitudes (e.g., reduced stigmatization), knowledge officer-level outcomes (e.g., officer satisfaction) and increased verbal negotiation skills instead of arresting ( 7 , 25 ). These effects correspond with the evaluation of the effectiveness of German training programs, which first and foremost aim to reduce the stigmatization of PMI and decrease police officers use of force ( 23 ). Without disregarding the perspective of PMI themselves ( 26 ), experts of police psychology and psychiatry such as ourselves who led this project, suggest that this training design could serve as an example and invitation to incorporate the already fruitful scientific discourse and bi-directional research experiences between mental health and law enforcement professionals. Hence, in future research and training program design, those experts who are involved should be encouraged to address the question of effectiveness assessment at an early stage.

Summarizing Existing Training Designs

The cit model.

Arguably among the best-known concepts is the CIT Model that was implemented in Memphis, Tennessee in 1988 which consists of a 40-h course. Originally, it incorporated mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, local advocacy groups, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). CIT addresses signs and symptoms of mental illness, such as Schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, affective disorders, cognitive disorders, addiction disorders, and anxiety disorders. Other components teach inter alia community resources and perspectives, communication techniques, needs of mental health consumers, and involuntary treatment. Didactical methods like role playing scenarios, audiovisual vignettes and de-escalation techniques are included, as well as field trips to local jails and psychiatric facilities.

Several modifications of the original CIT model emerged over the last couple of decades, 2 typically accounting for differences in the locally available services or size of police departments. Nevertheless, the core elements of CIT usually combine the networking of law enforcement, community, research, and mental health professions, as well as include policing procedures and mental health facilities' availability.

The R-Model

Between 2017 and 2018, the “Research-Response-Refer Model” was developed as a response to the changing climate of policing in the United States and included current knowledge about mental disorders, accessibility, cost-effectivity, and agency-specification. This consists of an 8-h in-house R-Model training, a problem overview, recognizable signs of crises and mental illness, management tools such as de-escalation and suicide prevention, aspects of trauma, treatment and resources were integrated, in addition to specific agencies' initiatives. It is worth noting that this training course design also encourages the invitation of guest speakers who suffer from serious mental illness themselves.

The main scope of this training model is to educate all types of police officers on the broader societal dynamics behind modern policing philosophies, stigmatization, the judicial perspective on mental health issues, ethics, and attitude formation. Hence, the components of this course design mainly cover knowledge and skills related to understanding the nature and effects of mental illnesses, as well as the specific local environment in which the interaction between police and PMI occurs. Furthermore, intervention strategies, risk assessment, use of discretion, ethical decision making, self-evaluation and assessment are included. In particular, TEMPO makes a distinction between specific target group audiences (e.g., “front desk” personnel, victim service workers, crisis negotiators, ERT/SWAT commanders), learning level varieties (in sum five levels, TEMPO 100–500 3 ), different time frames (e.g., TEMPO 101 is a 4-day module) and intensity. According to the authors of TEMPO, recommended methods in facilitating the learning effects include role playing scenarios, visiting sites of interest, testimonials of people affected by mental health issues, and simulation exercises. TEMPO also encourages the use of e-learning modules but leaves the specific implementation and method selection to be decided by each police organization ( 30 ).

T3 TM —Tact, Tactics, and Trust Training Program

In order to improve social interaction skills of United States soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) developed the T3 TM model. McLean et al. ( 31 ) examined its effectiveness on police officers' attitudes and behaviors when encountering citizens after their skills in decision making, de-escalation, empathy, rapport building, and self-control were enhanced through this course. The training is based on several video sequences depicting actual police-citizen interactions, which are subsequently discussed and embedded in half- and full-day training sessions that aim to introduce additional concepts. T3 TM is not exclusively focused on police officers' contact with PMI.

Mapping the Status Quo of Training Courses

According to a national survey among police departments, three basic training models can be distinguished within the United States ( 32 ): police-based specialized mental health response, such as Community Service Officers (CSO, see also Birmingham's CSO Program ), police-based specialized law enforcement response (e.g., CIT program), and specialized mental health responses situated within the healthcare system itself, such as the mobile crisis unit (MCU, see also The Knoxville mobile mental health crisis unit ). The Birmingham CSO Program can briefly be described as an in-house support mechanism for crisis intervention and follow-up assistance. Therefore, civilian dressed, unarmed community service officers employed by the police department without the authority to arrest, collaborate with police officers in cases of mental health emergencies. After participating in a 6-week training sequence and gathering field experiences, the CSOs are available in those urban police precincts which respond to mental health emergencies and attend to various additional forms of social service or other requests for general assistance. The so-called mobile crisis units (MCU) are comprised of community mental-healthcare-based crisis teams and interact with police departments in communities that have established a close liaison between law enforcement and mental health professionals. The MCUs typically respond to calls without a necessity for hospitalization or arrest, such as community support requests, or calls for assistance from jails and emergency rooms.

Furthermore, Community-oriented policing (COP) (which does not have a dedicated focus on interaction with PMI) addresses the relationships between law enforcement personnel and community members. Similar to problem-oriented policing (POP) as a preventive approach and most of the previously mapped concepts, their general contribution can be defined as enhancing officers' problem-solving skills.

In addition, Greenstone ( 33 ) and Shinder ( 34 ) refer to the similarities between two special types of law enforcement personnel, which are both confronted with crisis situations on a regular basis: police negotiators and crisis intervention units. Since the lead author of this study possesses extensive personal experience regarding the psychological training of police negotiators within the German police, we also chose to include this particular training perspective here. Indeed, situations which require specially trained negotiators, such as suicide (attempts), domestic violence, active threat scenarios, and hostage situations are frequently linked to symptoms of (temporary or chronical) mental disorders. Hence, exploring the training of police negotiators in regard to potentially valuable and transferable lessons for the general law enforcement community appears warranted. The training of police negotiators that was previously mentioned, which was conducted by the lead author of this study was repeated over a course of 9 years and each training was 3 weeks long. Building on this personal experience, the mandatory part of this course was the psychological training, mainly covering knowledge on suicide and suicidal behavior, psychology of (hostage) takers, and support methods for family members or colleagues of kidnapped persons, which lasted 6 days. In particular, previously mentioned skills taught in specialized courses such as communication, de-escalation, and encounters with suicidal persons as well as PMI are typically standard components of police negotiator qualifications. As for the practical methods which convey training content, German experiences have shown the value of extensive role-playing exercises and simulation sequences, which in addition are oftentimes video recorded and assessed for feedback with the trainees.

Summing up this brief assessment of the state of the art in training law enforcement officers, we identify several significant gaps and weaknesses in the current landscape. Most importantly, finding a consensus regarding the effectiveness of the evaluation of training programs typically fails because of the unresolved issue of how effectiveness should be defined in the first place. Secondly, training programs are characterized by a great diversity (e.g., voluntariness of participation, target group, offered cash bonus payments and potential certifications) which complicates comparability. In addition, advancements in research on mental illnesses (e.g., in the connection between violence and mental disorders) must be taken into account while establishing new training concepts as to adequately address today's challenges and developments for police officers. Furthermore, we hold that such highly specialized training courses of law enforcement personnel should be designed and driven by the end-user perspective and needs to maximize proactive integration of the learning goals into the daily policing work. Without active, positive, sustainable, and intrinsic support for such training, they may have little or even no lasting impact. Finally, with this article we aim to provide a proof of concept, showing how empirically-based and end-user driven training course design in the field of mental illness awareness and response can produce up-to-date and more differentiated education concepts, that are oriented toward the trainees' own motivation and interests to increase their acceptance and compliance.

Policing Landscape in Germany

Law enforcement in Germany is federally structured and the police force in general is separated into two main branches: the so-called uniformed police (or protection police) and the criminal investigation police. In Germany, uniformed officers, who are generally the first responders to a reported crime scene, present the major share of the police force's overall personnel. Their primary missions are threat mitigation tasks, initial on-site interrogations, and arrest or custody management. In contrast, the main tasks of the criminal investigation officers are pursuing or preventing crimes of medium or severe intensity. Their primary missions encompass advanced investigations and more detailed interrogations. Contact to mentally ill persons is frequent in both branches. In cases of self-endangerment or posing a threat to others, German police officers in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg are legally permitted to make preliminary decisions concerning the potential necessity of medical custody for a mentally ill person, even against their own will (e.g., § 33 PolGBW 4 and §§ 13/1, 13/3, 16/1 PsychKHGBW 5 ). The final decision on a patient's admission to a medical facility, however, depends on the assessment made by psychiatric professionals. Multi-professional approaches or nationwide established training programs to improve the interaction between police officers and PMI such as in the United States, as introduced earlier do not exist in Germany yet ( 2 ). This in turn provides the optimal condition for exploring and testing methods to design training courses from scratch instead of adapting or updating existing concepts. In this sense, the German case study chosen here provides a welcoming opportunity to suggest exemplary training course components and structure to the international discourse for potential adaptation and further field testing. At the very least, our approach allows us to assess the value of incorporating end-user needs and perspectives into the training course design in this domain.

In Germany, police officers can choose between three career paths (depending on their prior education level): middle, upper and higher service. Middle service police officers are exclusively uniformed police officers whereas higher service police officers are usually tasked with personnel leadership. Starting their career in Germany, police officers receive basic education in law enforcement essentials, including mental disorders in general. Each German state has authority over their own police training and philosophies, as they all have their own legal basis for the police forces. The Police College, located within the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where the empirical survey was conducted, aims to enhance the theoretical knowledge about mental disorders, but by far not every police officer (depending on their professional career paths and simple availability of limited participant numbers) can gain access. Nevertheless, the education of police officers concerning law enforcement and their contact to PMI is located within the state's responsibility, and unfortunately its relevance can be described as optional or subsidiary in Germany.

Police officers in Baden-Wuerttemberg are legally equipped with the opportunity to label a person as mentally ill within the police-internal case management system, subject to the condition that the individuals diagnose is supported by medical certification. This procedure aims to prepare police officers with a potential warning mechanism for encounters with individuals who, based on their previous history of mental illness- have driven altercations with law enforcement personnel, and might pose a serious threat for responding officers. Among the requirements to label a person in that way, are repeated negative contacts with law enforcement personnel, previous contact to the mental health care system, and the confirmed diagnosis of a mental disorder. With such high barriers to protect against potential misuse and stigmatization ( 35 ), there is a high probability that police officers will encounter PMI without prior notification. Consequently, adequate training might significantly improve the police officers' ability to handle such challenging situations.

General Aspects of Specialization Training in Mental Health Issues for Police Officers

We assume that a necessary condition for the successful establishment of new training programs within the police force is the trainees' acceptance. For instance, acceptance can be gained by addressing a formulated need and promising meaningful solutions to problems faced by the audience. Police forces are typically highly hierarchical organizations and the active participation and visible support by leadership positions might significantly influence the level of acceptance ( 30 , 36 ). Additionally, it seems advisable to employ professionally mixed training teams that combine competencies from policing and psychology backgrounds. This might successfully foster perceived credibility and legitimacy among the audience ( 37 , 38 ). A training design for police officers should also strive to utilize highly comprehensible language and learning goals that assume rather few personal experiences with mental disorders. This point was clearly influenced by the lack of education on this matter in Germany and might obviously differ in countries with a longer history of mental illness training among law enforcement personnel ( 39 ). For younger police officers and those who have just started their professional career in policing, it would be especially appropriate in our perspective to raise awareness for the likelihood and relevance concerning interactions with mentally ill people in their later policing life. All in all, we suggest to establish a training environment concerning police-PMI interactions which is accessible for all officers who are interested in the subject ( 30 , 37 , 40 ). Furthermore, it seems essential to design a curriculum with a central focus on feasibility and practicability. Taking in to account the daily workload of police officers (e.g., including shift work, physical and mental stress) and their mental or physical availability to participate in training sessions while on active duty, it seems beneficial to incorporate departmental requirements as well as the selection procedures of police officers who want to receive special training and be thoroughly aware of their day-to-day experiences during the training course design phase. In our exemplary training course design, we opt for a freely self-selectable and modular concept that allows adaption to shift and (arrange) schedules, as well as the general availability during working hours in order to avoid overtime. Concerning voluntary participation, research findings indicate no differences between police officers; whether self-selected or assigned to CIT-trainings regarding their empathy and psychological mindedness ( 41 ). However, some study results suggest a roughly doubled likelihood of prior exposure to mental health issues among self-selected officers, which clearly indicates a potential selection-bias if the trainings are offered exclusively on a voluntary basis ( 41 ). Still, the benefit of self-selection is validated through enhanced outcome results regarding the impact on key attitudes, skills, and adjusted behavior ( 42 ).

Based on this literature and the results of our survey, it seems advisable and feasible to create a modular and deductive curriculum design which covers general mental health education for every police officer regardless of professional assignments, and to include specialized add-on courses for subgroups of officers with a high demand for elaborated and sophisticated skillbuilding. Police officers should be given the greatest possible freedom to choose training modules, while also ensuring that the overall training components support and complement each other. Another practical problem that needs to be faced in training design is in regard to knowledge sustainability. Research indicates that in existing training concepts such as CIT officers who received training display significantly decreased knowledge about the core material, as soon as 1 month after the educational intervention. Generally, time passed was no reliable predictor of knowledge retention ( 43 ). Hence, officers might benefit more from continuous training concepts using a modular design, which allows to stretch exposure to education over a prolonged period of time ( 43 ). As a positive consequence, this might help to cover more specialized material rather than through a fixed time frame-based training design.

By the professional demands placed on police officers in their day-to-day work, pragmatism and a high intrinsic motivation to problem solving skills define policing culture ( 44 ). This means that training should always strive to be as practical and adaptable to daily policing challenges as possible. Our objective for designing the training course was to provide officers with the most effective skillset to adequately respond when in contact with mentally ill persons. Bringing these considerations together, we strongly encourage the combination of latest research results on mental health issues with simulation techniques such as role-playing scenarios, as they appear to be crucial and promising ( 11 , 34 , 36 , 40 , 45 ).

Integrating the well-established practices and positively evaluated components of existing training concepts, a central aim should be to improve communication skills, as well as non-directive active listening skills and de-escalation techniques [e.g., ( 31 )]. Furthermore, including professionals from local mental health services or PMI themselves is highly recommended based on the positive effects of these methods as seen through CIT. A multidisciplinary approach comprising experts from police, psychiatry, and psychology to manage the theoretical fundaments and the practical training sessions is also essential, as it has been shown that police officers (due to their occupational culture) will highly validate such partnerships if they are perceived to be valuable. O'Neill and McCarthy [( 44 ), p. 13] point out that “the tendency toward pragmatism, has actually facilitated multi-agency working in our studies. Once the officers saw the pragmatic elements of partnership work in action, this allowed them to value partnership work to the extent that previous incarnations of police culture were disturbed.” This directly supports the established positive experience from the CIT training designs that an intensive and daily work-oriented familiarization, with available community resources as alternative problem solutions for police officers while additionally, interacting with PMI are seen as highly effective ( 39 , 46 ). Such a multidisciplinary collaboration should form the foundation of the training design in order to establish functional cooperation infrastructures within communities, and to further maintain a high quality of educational standards. In addition to experts and educators who are accustomed to using accessible language and presentation styles, local characteristics influencing the audience must be considered in the training design as well. This can include introducing (forensic) psychiatry or other mental health institutions with a local presence; numbers and types of police operations in urban regions; frequent suicide (attempts) and their circumstances and so on.

Materials and Methods

Participants and recruitment.

The exemplary training course design presented in this study in based on a questionnaire-based voluntary survey carried out among law enforcement personnel of the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg ( N = 2,228), involving the uniformed (81.1%) and the criminal investigation (18.3%) divisions of the statewide police force. Female participants accounted for 28.2% of the sample (compared to 24.8% of the overall police population) and 71.8% were male (compared to 75.2% of the overall police population). Table 1 shows the relation between the police officer population in Baden-Wuerttemberg and the study sample divided into uniformed police and criminal investigation. The study sample represents the police population in Baden-Wuerttemberg regarding career path and sex quite well. Regarding age, the study sample is however noticeably younger than the police population in general ( Table 2 ). The participating police officers in total were active in this profession for an average of 18.2 years ( SD = 11.8; Min = 0.5; Max = 48 years). The uniformed police officers worked 6 years less on average (17.1 years, SD = 11.7) than their criminal investigation colleagues (23.2 years, SD = 11.1). Since everyday task involve higher physical demands for uniformed police officers, the proportion of younger personnel is typically higher in that division compared to the criminal investigation branch. The comparatively high proportion of participating uniformed officers in the study sample (81.1%) may therefore explain the sample's younger age average, in the study. Concerning the police officers' personal experiences with mental illness, the largest single group among the participants reported having had limited exposure (40.9%). However, as shown in Figure 1 , more than half of all officers in the sample (51.8%) report some form of personal experiences ranging from medium to significant intensity. In total, 15 police departments in Baden-Wuerttemberg were contacted, out of which 14 participated in the survey and received paper pencil questionnaires. In total, 4,455 questionnaires with a return rate of 50.01% were distributed. The estimated time for answering the questionnaire took ~20 min. Participation was anonymous, voluntary and possible during working hours. The complete and translated questionnaire used in this survey is provided in the Appendix . Each questionnaire was delivered together with a declaration of consent and data protection statement. In order to ensure anonymity, the questionnaire sheets were collected separately and returned through the departments ~6 weeks after receipt.

Relation between overall police population in Baden-Wuerttemberg and study sample divided into uniformed and criminal investigation division and in regard to career path (middle, upper, higher), as well as sex (male, female).

a, b Reduced sample size because of missings .

Age groups in police population in Baden-Wuerttemberg and study sample in%.

Police officers' personal experiences with mental disorders.

Statistical Analysis

The data was evaluated using the SPSS statistics software, version 27. The data was assessed using Chi-square-tests and Mann–Whitney U -tests. The Shapiro–Wilk test was used for testing data normal-distribution. Chi-square tests were used to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between sample groups e.g., between uniformed and criminal investigation police divisions, different age groups, and police officers' gender. When sample sizes were small, Fisher's exact-test was used. As a non-parametric equivalent for independent samples and because of the fact that the distributions of the groups were not equal, the Mann–Whitney U was preferred (instead of t -tests) for calculation of differences in medians. On the basis of these calculations, a training program schedule was designed, which is detailed in the following section.

The first key finding from our survey for this article's focus is that half (50.4%) of the participants expressed a strong desire to learn more about interactions with PMI, to improve their skills to adequately respond to such challenging situations and they would welcome significantly expanded training. Another 39.1% of the survey participants wished for increased networking with professionals. Regarding the establishment of supervision by mental health professionals within police force, only 13.9% of participants saw this as a favorable option. Hence, it appears to be a direct consequence of the survey to design a training course that combines multi-agency partnership building with a focus on enhancing personal skillsets required to adequately respond to specific challenges. Based on our survey results, Table 3 introduces our suggested modular training course design. While the basic module examples shown in the first row should be offered to all police officers regardless of their professional duties and specialization, the advanced modules shown in the second, third, and fourth rows should exclusively be available to certain subgroups such as uniformed police, criminal investigation police, or police officers interacting with youth and children. All modules should include role play sequences and the introduction of potential network partners. The aim of this division into basic and advanced training levels is obviously to better address the needs and interests of various groups within the law enforcement community based on their tasks and likelihood of encountering PMI in specific contexts. This fundamental training design increases the availability of basic knowledge about mental illnesses while allowing a higher degree of specialization to those officers who need it most. This might further increase acceptance and learning sustainability among the trainees.

Exemplary training program.

Basic Modules

In addition to the theoretical background, the introduction of local mental health service professionals and networks, trialogue sequences including (former) patients or family members, and situational role-playing scenarios are essential components of this level, aiming to provide a general mental health education for police officers. The structure of the training course design also allows for the use of electronic learning platforms to cover the theoretical background and fundamentals. The modules that are outlined in detail in the following sections derive from our survey but should be seen as exemplary content that can and should be adapted to the needs and interests of the target audience.

Module 1: Mental Disorders With High Relevance for Policing

According to the perception of police officers who participated in our survey, certain mental disorders have been identified as highly relevant for policing work. Hence, the theoretical background module should focus on these specific disorders: the contact of police officers to patients with depression (86.3%), addiction (83.7%), and schizophrenia (78.8%), were consistently ranked highest among the survey participants. Slightly less relevant but nevertheless still very common in the eyes of the participating officers are contacts with persons suffering from borderline personality disorder (64.3%) and bipolar disorder (56.7%). Based on this perception, we measured symptom-related knowledge regarding those five mental health disorders among officers in our sample. The list was made up of 16 symptoms in total and between three and five main symptoms could be assigned to the associated disorder. Hence, a maximum score of 16 could have been reached for each symptom-related knowledge item, counting scores for including the right and excluding the wrong symptoms ( Min = 0; Max = 16). Multiple answers were sometimes possible (e.g., concerning sleep disturbance). Affective disorders such as depression ( M = 13.5) and mania ( M = 12.8), as well as schizophrenia ( M = 11.6) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ( M = 11.6) are more familiar to officers than anxiety disorders ( M = 10.9). Combining our survey results with the state of the art in the academic discourse, as well as the experiences from another training course, we recommend that basic education be provided for police officers. This basic education should include topics relating to and discussing mental health disorders such as addiction, schizophrenia, and affective disorders since they appear to be most relevant in the perspective of the target audience. Nevertheless, we also strongly recommend the inclusion of a content-related focus on anxiety disorders and borderline personality disorders. These two disorders seem to play a common role in policing and considering our survey, criminal investigation officers have an especially high interest in the topic and need to receive training in PTSD as these officers report a much higher contact frequency (53.8%) compared to their uniformed colleagues (44.6%) (see also section Module 7: Trauma sensitivity and interacting with traumatized persons).

Module 2: Learning How to Respond to Suicidal Patients

The reported high frequency of suicide or attempted suicide cases is noteworthy. Three quarters of the respondents in the survey stated that they already had encountered cases of suicide (75.4%) and suicide attempts (68.9%). Learning how to adequately respond to suicidal patients therefore appears equally important for police officers as the education about mental disorders in general. In this context, training designs should include local characteristics that influence the potential case encounters for the audience (e.g., higher rates of suicide attempts in urban regions should be thematized). Since the lead author of the present study designed and accompanied a suicide-focused interaction training for German uniformed police officers in 2018, we chose to include her specific experiences here as well. During the 1-day in-house training workshop conducted by a team which consisted of a police officer and negotiation expert who experienced several suicidal (attempt) situations with PMI, the lead author taught basic statistics of the issue, facts and commonly held myths about suicide, various triggers involved, motives, and the connection to several mental illnesses. Communications techniques such as active listening skills were included in the training, as well as adjusting on-site policing measures (e.g., road closures, bystander management) and potential stressors encountered by police officers involved. Three role playing scenarios conducted by trainee actors illustrated two situations involving encounters with suicidal PMI (depression and schizophrenia), as well as an intoxicated person suffering from a personal crisis situation. Furthermore, the workshop focused on collaboration mechanisms with police negotiators, as well as emergency personnel. Finally, this specific training concept included suicide by cop incidents and legal issues. In the workshop's conclusion, the importance of specific debriefing techniques for police officers with the help of external service providers was a central part.

Module 3: Communication Techniques

The police officers who participated in our survey were also given the opportunity to freely indicate other challenges they experienced while interacting with mentally ill people. In order to manage and better assess these open parts of the survey, we grouped answers into categories. More than half of the police officers (56.7%) of both subgroups (uniformed and criminal investigation) experienced challenges resulting from direct contact with PMI. This category includes answers such as difficulties in “calming down,” “empathize,” “communication,” “keeping calm” and/or “building trust.” Hence, we concluded that at least one module in our training design should focus on active listening skills, the concept of empathy and empathic negotiation, techniques for building rapport, as well as situations requiring mutual respect and appreciation.

Module 4: Mental Hygiene and Supervision in Policing

A small yet significant percentage of the participating police officers (13.9%) suggested to establish supervision within the police force as a desirable improvement for encountering challenges resulting from contacts with PMI. Supervision can be used as a debriefing strategy after officers respond to certain potentially traumatic scenarios or preferably as a standing service for officers in general. It may be applied in one-to-one or group sessions, as well as periodically or incident focused. Well-established supervision concepts are rarely available to German police officers in our experience and are offered primarily to specialized subgroups, if at all (e.g., officers investigating cases of child pornography and abuse).

Advanced Modules 5–8

Advanced modules should be designed to build on the previous basic modules after completion, by the target audience. These advanced components should introduce the trainees to specific methods and scenarios, such as interaction circumstances between police officers and PMI or skills to peacefully end potentially aggressive confrontations with PMI, depending on the officers' duties and responsibilities. Based on our survey results which were somewhat expected, police officers primarily encounter perpetrators of crimes (82.3%). However, only slightly less relevant are contacts with victims (72.9%). Interactions with witnesses appear to be less relevant (55.4%). Both of the latter categories of potential counterparts in police officers' interactions should not be ignored in the training design with a focus on PMI.

Module 5: Risks and Perceived Danger in Contacts With PMI

In the perspective of around a third of the surveyed police officers, a link between aggressive behavior shown by patients suffering from schizophrenia (34.6%) and addiction (30.4%) exists. Furthermore, the responses of almost 90% in the sample (1,983 police officers, 89.0%) indicate a potential connection between offenses involving bodily harm and addiction (35.7%), as well as patients suffering from schizophrenia (38.5%). Depression, from the perspective of police officers in our survey, is primarily linked to police operations concerning suicide and suicide attempts 6 (25.2%). The responses of uniformed police officers concerning PMI indicate a statistically significant degree of perceived dangerousness (78.5%) and lack of predictability in behavior (67.4%) compared to their criminal investigation colleagues (68.1 and 59.3%), p < 0.001. Hence, this module addresses the potential knowledge gaps regarding actual threats posed by PMI, important warning signs, and mechanisms involved in increased perceptions of danger regarding mentally ill persons. The aim of this module is to improve trainees' capabilities to understand, assess, and predict the behavior of PMI instead of being influenced by stereotypes and biases that might result in stigmatization and situational escalation, driven by inadequate responses or attitudes. At this stage, officers have already been provided with the necessary basic information regarding mental disorders with high relevance for policing, as well as useful communication techniques. The most suitable target audience for this module, however, are uniformed police officers, who are typically the first responding officers at a crime scene with the mission to mitigate threats, perform initial on-site interrogations, and arrest or custody management of potential perpetrators, witnesses, and/or victims.

Module 6: Recognizing Domestic Violence and Neglect

The participating law enforcement officers from our survey were also asked to estimate the prevalence rates of specific types of offenses (domestic violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, ritual abuse). In our hypothesis, these types of abuse might be associated with causing serious mental disorders. On a scale from 0 to 100%, police officers were asked to estimate the percentage of people they encountered in their day-to-day work when being exposed to these types of violence. In this context, domestic violence seems to be the most common form of violence police officers encounter ( M = 25.7%, SD = 17.2), followed by physical abuse ( M = 20.6%, SD = 15.7), neglect ( M = 19.9%, SD = 16.8), sexual abuse ( M = 13.8%, SD = 11.9), and ritual abuse ( M = 5.4%, SD = 9.5). At this point, it is once again important to distinguish between different target groups of the training course. Neglect and domestic violence are statistically significant more often encountered by uniformed police, p < 0.001, while sexual and physical abuse seem to be more relevant in criminal investigations (see also section Module 8: Interrogation of persons being affected by sexual and/or physical abuse), p < 0.001. In consequence, we suggest including a specialized module to help uniformed police officers detect potential signs of domestic violence and neglect while entering private homes or when interacting with potential perpetrators, witnesses and/or victims.

Module 7: Trauma Sensitivity and Interacting With Traumatized Persons

In contrast to the previous module and according to the survey results presented in module 1, criminal investigation officers appear to have a statistically significant higher rate of contact frequency to persons suffering from PTSD (53.8%), p < 0.01. In addition, surveyed officers in general estimated that 14.3% of their contact persons are traumatized, with a statistically significant difference between the estimations made by uniformed (13.7%) and criminal investigation officers (16.8%), p < 0.001. These results fit well into the theoretical background of and expectations for the different job profiles: criminal investigation officers conduct intensive investigations and interrogations on frequent contact to perpetrators, witnesses and/or victims of potentially traumatizing (typically more serious) crimes. Consequently, we saw the need to include a specialized module on handling trauma among various types of contact persons in our course design.

Module 8: Interrogation of Persons Being Affected by Sexual and/or Physical Abuse

Based on our survey findings presented before, criminal investigation officers have a statistically significant higher frequency of contacts to persons who are affected by sexual and/or physical abuse. These findings should translate into a dedicated module covering these specific issues in mental health literacy training courses, such as those presented here. It is also necessary to educate participating officers on the differences in effects caused by these forms of abuse for different types of contact persons, such as perpetrators, witnesses, and/ or victims.

Advanced Modules 9–12

Module 9: self-protection and special characteristics in contact with pmi.

Linked to the contents of module 1, 3, and 5 , policing measures focused on self-protection must be critically reflected in this module. It is especially important to address uniformed police officers, who are typically the first responding officers at a crime scene. The risk of overly aggressive reactions by police officers and the use of force while encountering PMI (in the context of involuntary transfer for treatment) must be a core part of the training course and the facilitated discussion with trainees. Here, a strategy focused on involving on-site de-escalation techniques, such as negotiation, communication, and flexible tactics should be presented and practiced. The importance of physical distance, opportunities of tactical withdrawal, and the relevance of timing can be valid alternative options to pacify emotionally charged and potentially confrontational situations. Ideally, this module includes facilitation by an expert in police tactics and conflict responses, for example from Special Weapons and Tactics teams, self-defense trainers, or urban conflict specialists. As we have noted before, police culture is heavily influenced by a sense of pragmatism, which in this module clearly means and refers to the high priority of protecting themselves, fellow officers, and the public from any threats. In the context of PMI, stereotypes might result in pre-contact assumptions of severe danger to the officers' lives. This module must be designed to convey additional methods to self-protect without risking further escalation or questioning the legitimate need to avoid any unnecessary threats for the trainees. Arguably, officers will naturally opt for the self-protection methods they know best and are most familiar with. This may include the use of potentially lethal force to neutralize a threat. Hence, the aim of this module is to provide a sense of efficacy and agency in choosing from various additional de-escalation techniques in challenging situations with PMI.

Module 10: Successful Collaboration With Mental Health Service

It has been shown in the study by O'Neill and McCarthy ( 44 ) and supported through our survey, that police officers highly value and welcome multi-agency cooperation that helps them to improve their job performance. In our survey, 39.1% of the sample directly requested increased networking opportunities with mental health professionals. The responses of uniformed police officers indicate statistically significant more frequent challenges in collaboration with mental health services (24.4% instead of 12.7% among criminal investigation officers), p < 0.001. This might be due to the fact that uniformed police officers more frequently experience referral situations leading to the potential need for medical custody for a mentally ill person than their colleagues. This might include cases with high complexity, significant demands on time resources, and sometimes discrepancies with the patients' or the medical professionals' perspectives. The main goal of this module therefore is to introduce insights into professional practices and workflows within the mental health service sector, since an increased understanding of a potential collaboration partner's operations might decrease friction and practical problems of communication and referral. Survey officers for example described extremely long waiting periods or immediate discharges after transferring PMI into hospitals as highly frustrating and discouraging experiences. This may lead to reservations about mental health professionals and refraining from even attempting a collaboration. Successful collaborations are more likely when operational processes and workflows on both sides (police and mental health system) are well-known and mutual understanding has been facilitated through an exchange or constructive dialog between both professions.

Module 11: Interactions With Children in Police Investigations and Interrogations

Our survey results suggest that in addition to their contact with adults suffering from mental health diseases, criminal investigation officer in particular experience contact to youth (39.3%) and children (14.8%). 7 Notwithstanding the circumstances (whether the contact person is the perpetrator, victim, or witness; mental ill or not), police officers interacting with children need to be prepared for these situations through specialized training modules. Due to the higher demands on officers to protect the well-being of children especially when they are involved in crime scenarios, a risk to cause trauma or inadequately respond to children's needs in those situations exists. Hence, this module focuses on topics around mental health issues and the needs of youth and adolescents, as well as communication techniques, in addition to the risk of heightened suggestibility while interrogations are conducted.

Module 12: Indications for Credibility of Statements by PMI

Criminal investigation officers in our survey describe a statistically significant higher prevalence of difficulties to assess the statements' credibility of mentally ill people during interrogations (37.6%), p < 0.001. Module 12 therefore addresses opportunities and limits of mentally ill persons regarding memory, plausibility, court testimony, and the risk of re-traumatization through interrogations and court appearances. Training police officers on how to distinguish between imagined statements or symptom-related episodes resulting from mental disorders and valid statements, can help to improve the effectiveness of police investigations and interrogations involving PMI. For instance, this may be achieved through better equipment and training in order to use it accordingly. In Germany, a positive process of change happened during recent years, which is, however, not completed yet; video and sound recording of interrogation situations, more standardized and sophisticated exploration methods, less use of projective procedures, fewer reporting without reality criteria, more frequent assumption of the null hypothesis ( 47 ).

Specialized Role-Playing Scenarios and Meeting Network Partners

In addition to the suggested teaching content from the previous sections, in-depth target audience-oriented training courses should include role-paying scenarios and introduce network partners, as obvious methods to enhance police officers' learning success in preparation for encounters with PMI. Based on our survey results, the following exemplary role-playing scenarios appear to be valuable additions to the course design: (1) Calming down a person with schizophrenia , 8 (2) transferring an intoxicated person 8 into psychiatric care , (3) interacting with perpetrators, victims, and witnesses in the context of interrogations and investigations , (4) interaction methods suitable for children and adolescents . Based on the lead author's experience in police negotiator education, the training effectiveness of role-playing exercises can be increased significantly through the inclusion of debriefing and feedback components. In addition, our survey findings also support the integration of the following speaker backgrounds and network partners (who should be locally embedded in any case): (1) patients with treated and stabilized schizophrenia , 8 well-adjusted and stabilized , (2) local psychiatrists to introduce the conditions, workflow, and decision-making processes in psychiatric practice , (3) experts and consultants with experience in plausibility assessment during court appearances , (4) local psychological-pedagogical professionals .

Limitations

Self-assessment questionnaires such as the survey underlying our training course design are subjective and—in contrast to standardized observations, semi-structured interviews, or analyses of police reports—susceptible to effects of social desirability and bias. For example, working with police reports or statistics could help to objectify the number of encounter-based situations between police officers and PMI. For this, a necessary requirement must be, that the acquisition of data is standardized, which is not yet the case in Germany. The perceived danger of PMI could be one result of a biased perception in police officers, in our opinion (e.g., Halo effect, confirmation bias, fundamental attribution error). Police officers may experience especially challenging situations with PMI because of a lack of knowledge and necessary experience. Semi-structured interviews and standardized observation (especially training-related pre- and post-testing) with standardized measure values could reduce such limitations. The training concept is empirically derived. Due to the rudimentary knowledge on mental health issues that was reported by the majority of the participating police officers, the idea that their responses do not in fact reproduce the actual situation and most relevant challenges, cannot be ruled out. Internationally, policing practices as well as police education differ substantially, therefore the applicability of our results to other countries and contexts might be somewhat limited. However, since we present our training course design as an exemplary form of translating end-user perspectives into training contents (proof of concept), we are confident that the main philosophies and components are of relevance and interest to other policing environments. This is further supported by the fact that our survey includes one of the largest samples in this research field. Of course, our training course design must be understood as preliminary and theoretical in nature. Feasibility studies, empirical testing, application, and evaluation should clearly follow.

Scientific advances in research on mental health issues including the impact and the evaluation of mental health treatments, policing reforms, and changing mental health infrastructures clearly affect police interactions with PMI. A continuously improved understanding of these interactions as well as the awareness of the requirements for all involved actors and parties, can help to develop successful and mutually beneficial solutions to situational challenges in order to strive for the best practice approaches in this domain. Therefore, it must be pointed out that during the last few years, international collaboration projects between researchers and practitioners have focused on the development of new police officer training concepts, further improving existing ones, and expanding the overall focus of educating law enforcement personnel. In Germany, multi-professional approaches or nationwide established training programs do not exist yet ( 2 ). The mapping of existing mental health training concepts for police officers introducing this article shows a strong need for updated and more differentiated training designs. This is where our research can help urge others to reevaluate and further develop the international discourse. Our empirically-based findings from surveying German police officers about their perceptions and needs in daily policing with PMI have identified a so far largely ignored component that is essential to better inform the multidisciplinary view of this issue: the end-user perspective on mental health literacy training for law enforcement personnel. As a main result, we presented an end-user driven exemplary training course design considering the police officers' maximum degree of acceptance and perceived feasibility, to improve the incorporation of the modern state of the art between police officers and PMI. In our opinion, training program requirements should be distinguished between different police target audiences and therefore, adapt its contents to certain subgroups' individual needs; which in our case involves uniformed and criminal investigation branches. For this reason, we designed a modular, deductive, continuous, and dynamic training concept, starting with basic information for all police officers and moving to advanced topics later on for smaller subgroups. In accordance with Thomas and Watson ( 3 ) who noted: “Training is needed for everyone, but specialized training is not for all.” Similar to TEMPO and other training concepts ( 30 , 37 , 40 ), we suggest providing all police officers with basic modules and to target smaller subgroups with more specialized content. Instead of a time-based focus, we suggest a content-driven design. The theoretical inputs can be provided through electronic learning platforms. Contrary to unique training programs for police officers like CIT, we recommend a continuous training design that allows for the consistent delivery of knowledge and information. Furthermore, we recommend officers to be regularly reminded of the topic's importance and relevance, as well as to incorporate potential judicial, tactical, political, and other changes to their daily work (e.g., in the mental health system or law enforcement community). As it is the case with almost all existing training programs, we also put a strong emphasis on voluntary, practical training components (e.g., role playing) that incorporates mental health professionals, and trialogical approaches. The central focus of these trainings should be placed on de-escalation, negotiation [( 48 ), similar to the T3 TM program], and should also include collaboration with mental health professionals as alternatives to less lethal techniques to pacify any confrontations. Even though our survey and subsequent training design are naturally specific to the German context, we are aware of the similarities it has to the education of police negotiators within the police in other countries (especially providing them with active listening skills). In addition, the increasing importance of teaching (specialized groups of) police officers about trauma sensitivity and trauma related forms of violence [e.g., neglect, domestic, sexual, and physical abuse 9 ], as well as interactions with children, youth, victims, and witnesses are not challenges unique to Germany. In the United States especially, police interactions with PMI resulting in lethal and highly publicized force has directly caused significant public unrest, more violence, and community alienation from the law enforcement. Furthermore, cases of marginalization and a perceived exclusion of PMI who are at least in some countries, predominantly members of ethnic minorities, interact with larger public perceptions and allegations of systemic racism and law enforcement biases against minorities ( 50 ). In this context, a perceived lack of PMI's credibility seems to play an important role ( 16 ), which should be addressed through adequate training to ensure proper procedural justice.

The balancing act between well-equipped self-protection and proficiency in flexible tactics while encountering PMI, such as de-escalation and tactical withdrawal, are key components of the ongoing debate in many countries, including Germany. However, we strongly recommend that the current discourse and the practical application on-site be significantly improved through theoretically and practically well-trained police officers, as well as through the acceptance of police leadership; in regard to attractive, feasible, self-selected, and ongoing training concepts with clear practice orientation.

The American Psychological Association recently published a review focused on debunking myths around violence associated with mental disorders ( 9 ). It is fair to say that we are currently experiencing an encouraging phase of replacing many stereotypes and commonly held assumptions with evidence-based facts and proven methods to improve the response toward PMI. This holds great potential for professionals to adjust and update their current perspectives on this issue, mainly through better collaboration between scholars, clinicians, psychologists, contact persons, and of course law enforcement professionals.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ulm University Medical Center. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

Both authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Author Disclaimer

This article only represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the Ministry of the Interior, Digitalisation and Local Government of Baden-Württemberg.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1 Research received ethics committee IRB approval, Ulm University, Protocol Number 03/19-FSt./bal.

2 E.g. in Waterloo, Iowa; Portland, Oregon; Albuquerque, New Mexico; in Seattle, Washington; in Akron, Ohio ( 27 ); in Colorado ( 28 ) CIT-ECHO an Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes ( 29 ).

3 Level explained: TEMPO 100 includes TEMPO 101–104; TEMPO 200 includes TEMPO 201–202; TEMPO 300 includes TEMPO 301; TEMPO 400 includes TEMPO 401.

4 https://www.landesrecht-bw.de/jportal/?quelle=jlink&docid=jlr-PolGBW2021pP33&psml=bsbawueprod.psml&max=true (accessed June, 2021).

5 https://www.landesrecht-bw.de/jportal/?quelle=jlink&docid=jlr-PsychKGBWpG3&psml=bsbawueprod.psml&max=true (accessed June, 2021).

6 In Germany committing suicide is not a criminal offence but typically involves policing measures related to threat mitigation.

7 According to German law (§ 1 JuSchG, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/juschg/__1.html ) children are people who are not yet 14 years old, youth are people who are 14 years of age or older, but not yet 18 years old.

8 The specific diagnosis and included mental illness can vary and be adapted to the needs of the target audience.

9 For more information, see Lorey and Fegert ( 49 ).

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.706587/full#supplementary-material

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Criminal Justice Collaborative

Study: body-worn camera research shows drop in police use of force.

Cheryl Corley

Police officer David Moore is pictured wearing a body camera in Ipswich, Mass., on Dec. 1, 2020. The city was among 25 statewide awarded grants to purchase body-worn cameras for videotaping interactions with the public. A new study says the benefits to society and police departments outweigh the costs of the cameras. Boston Globe/Boston Globe via Getty Images hide caption

Police officer David Moore is pictured wearing a body camera in Ipswich, Mass., on Dec. 1, 2020. The city was among 25 statewide awarded grants to purchase body-worn cameras for videotaping interactions with the public. A new study says the benefits to society and police departments outweigh the costs of the cameras.

One of the most powerful examples of the significance of police body-worn cameras played out in a Minneapolis court room during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd. The video collected from the body worn cameras of the police officers involved in Floyd's arrest showed his death from a variety of angles and prosecution and defense attorneys used the video extensively as they argued the case.

Across the country, police departments are increasingly using body-worn cameras to better monitor what officers are doing out in the field with the hope that they will reduce the prevalence of misconduct and improve fairness in policing. Still, there's been a lot of uncertainty over whether the technology is actually helpful. In addition, local governments and police departments that have not integrated the technology as part of their policing practice often cite cost as a barrier.

America Reckons With Racial Injustice

Police bodycam video shows george floyd's distress during fatal arrest.

Now, in one of the latest studies about the equipment, a team of public safety experts and world economists say body-worn cameras are both beneficial and cost effective. They outline their reasoning in a research paper released recently by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Council on Criminal Justice's Task Force on Policing. The report is an update of a variety of studies of body-worn cameras and it also compares the cost of the technology to the dollar value of the benefits that may come as a result.

Professor Jens Ludwig, head of the Crime Lab, says the findings show the key benefit of body-worn cameras is the reduced use of police force. For example, among the police departments studied, complaints against police dropped by 17% and the use of force by police, during fatal and non-fatal encounters, fell by nearly 10%.

"That's hopeful but not a panacea," Ludwig says. "Body-worn cameras are a useful part of the response but not a solution by themselves. Body-worn cameras are not going to solve the problem of the enormous gap we see in police use of force in the U.S. against Black versus white Americans. "

Even so, New York University Professor Morgan Williams Jr. says "integrating the technology into policing practices can be an important step towards making policing fairer and more accountable."

Live Updates: Protests For Racial Justice

Police bodycam transcripts: george floyd pleaded 20 times that he couldn't breathe.

In 2013, about a third of local law enforcement agencies, used some form of body-worn camera technology. By 2016, the number had grown to nearly 50%. While law enforcement often cites finances as a barrier to adopting body-worn cameras, the researchers say the benefits to society and police departments outweigh the costs of the cameras.

The pricetag for police bodycams can be several thousands of dollars per officer since costs include purchasing and maintaining the equipment, paying for storing the enormous amount of information the cameras can collect, and training officers. On the other hand, the study asserts that the dollar value of body-worn camera benefits — the estimated savings generated by a reduction of citizen complaints and averted use of force incidents — along with the cost reductions that could come from fewer investigations, is significant. The study estimates the ratio of the value of the benefits compared to the cost of body-worn cameras at 5 to 1 and well above an estimated 2 to 1 cost-benefit of hiring more police.

"If you are a local government looking at adopting the cost, from your narrow green eyeshade bottom line, the technology probably pays for itself," Ludwig says. "And the benefits to the public are a huge win and easily outweigh the cost."

The study notes, however, that the research developed so far about body-worn cameras is limited since results are based on data from police departments that were the first to adopt the new technology. It could also be, says Ludwig, that body-worn cameras and the impact they have on policing will be different as people figure out better ways to use the technology.

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Growing share of Americans say they want more spending on police in their area

Amid mounting public concern about violent crime in the United States, Americans’ attitudes about police funding in their own community have shifted significantly.

The share of adults who say spending on policing in their area should be increased now stands at 47%, up from 31% in June 2020. That includes 21% who say funding for their local police should be increased a lot , up from 11% who said this last summer.

Support for reducing spending on police has fallen significantly: 15% of adults now say spending should be decreased, down from 25% in 2020. And only 6% now advocate decreasing spending a lot , down from 12% who said this last year. At the same time, 37% of adults now say spending on police should stay about the same, down from 42% in 2020.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand public views on the level of police funding in local communities and the level of concern about violent crime in the United States. This analysis is based on two separate surveys. We surveyed 10,371 U.S. adults in September 2021 and 10,221 in July 2021. Everyone who took part in both surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited though national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The surveys are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are  the questions used for the September survey  and its  methodology . Here are  the questions used for the July survey and its methodology .

Views on police funding continue to differ widely by race and ethnicity, age and political party. White (49%) and Hispanic (46%) adults are more likely than Black (38%) or Asian (37%) adults to say spending on police in their area should be increased. Black adults (23%) are more likely to say that police funding should be decreased than those who are White (13%) or Hispanic (16%). Some 22% of Asian adults say spending should be reduced, which is statistically higher than the share among White adults but not higher than the share among Hispanic adults.

Majorities among those ages 50 and older favor increased spending on police, including 63% of those 65 and older. Young adults remain the biggest proponents of decreased police funding: Roughly a third (32%) of those ages 18 to 29 say there should be less spending on police in their area. This compares with 18% of those ages 30 to 49 and fewer than one-in-ten of those 50 and older.

Partisanship is strongly linked with views of police funding. A majority of Republicans and independents who lean to the Republican Party (61%) say spending on police should be increased, with 29% saying it should be increased a lot; 5% of Republicans say spending should be decreased, and 33% say it should stay about the same.

By contrast, 34% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say police funding should be increased, 25% say it should be decreased and 40% would like to see it stay about the same.

Since 2020, the views of Black Americans and Democrats have changed more than the views of White and Hispanic adults and Republicans when it comes to decreasing funding for local police. The share of Black adults who say police spending in their area should be decreased has fallen 19 percentage points since last year (from 42% to 23%), including a 13-point decline in the share who say funding should be decreased a lot (from 22% to 9%). The share of White and Hispanic adults who say funding for local police should be decreased also declined over this period, but not as much.

Similarly, the share of Democrats who say funding for local police should be decreased has fallen markedly – from 41% in 2020 to 25% today. By comparison, the share of Republicans who prefer less spending – which was already quite low – has moved incrementally lower. Growing shares of Republicans and Democrats alike now say police funding should be increased in their area.

Among Democrats, Black (38%) and Hispanic (39%) adults are more likely than White adults (32%) to say spending on police in their area should be increased. There is no significant difference across these racial and ethnic groups in the share of adults who say spending should be decreased.

Within the GOP, White and Hispanic adults differ in their views on this question: 64% of White Republicans say police spending in their area should be increased, compared with 53% of Hispanic Republicans. Relatively small shares in each group – 4% of White Republicans and 9% of Hispanic Republicans – would like to see spending go down. (There were too few Black Republicans in the sample to break out separately.)

The age gap in views about police funding has widened since 2020, mainly because views have shifted more dramatically among those ages 50 and older. The share of adults in this age group who say police spending should be increased has jumped 22 percentage points since 2020 (from 37% to 59%), while the increase has been more modest among those younger than 50 (from 26% to 36%). Both age groups have seen a drop-off in support for reduced spending on local police. These age patterns are similar among White and Black adults, as well as across parties.

Americans’ changing attitudes about police spending in their area have occurred amid rising public concern about violent crime. In July 2021, 61% of adults said violent crime was a very big problem in the country today, up from 48% in April 2021 and 41% in June 2020 (though concern over crime has fluctuated in recent years). In the July survey, Americans expressed more concern about violent crime than they did about the federal budget deficit (50% said this was a very big problem), climate change (47%), racism (45%), economic inequality (44%) and illegal immigration (43%).

Note: Here are  the questions used for the September survey  and its  methodology . Here are  the questions used for the July survey and its methodology .

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Kim Parker is director of social trends research at Pew Research Center .

Kiley Hurst is a research analyst focusing on social and demographic research at Pew Research Center .

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Current Issues in Law Enforcement: What Will Departments Face in 2022?

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By Matt Rowley Posted on February 14, 2022

In recent years, police departments across the country have been facing intense public scrutiny . The spotlight continues to shine on the actions of law enforcement officers, and departments are reacting to demands for immediate changes at multiple levels.

Criminal justice professionals are in the difficult position of doing important work serving their communities while also considering public opinion. In this article, we explore four current issues in law enforcement and the impact they’re having on police departments across the country.

1. Police Recruitment and Retention

One of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement is retention and recruitment within police departments. In a 2021 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, law enforcement agencies reported an 18% increase in resignations and a 45% increase in retirements compared to the previous year. Respondents reported that numerous factors contributed to officers leaving, including, but not limited to:

• Officers seeking jobs outside of law enforcement.
• Negativity surrounding law enforcement in general.
• Pandemic fatigue.
• Pressure from family to change careers.

Many of these issues started before the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests of 2020 . Consider these results from a 2019 report published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in which agencies from federal, state, local and tribal levels were surveyed:

• 78% of agencies reported having difficulty recruiting eligible candidates.
• 65% of agencies reported having too few candidates applying for positions.
• 75% of agencies reported that recruiting was more difficult than in the past.
• 50% of agencies reported having to change their policies to increase the number of qualified candidates.
• 25% of agencies reported having to reduce or eliminate services, units or positions due to staffing difficulties.

Police departments are left with many questions. What are their officers’ needs? What issues are reported at exit interviews? Do departments need to offer better compensation packages? Should they focus on recruiting candidates with more education ? Are they offering enough incentives to stay with the force? Police recruitment and retention is a complicated issue, and it’s one that leaders in criminal justice will be working on for years to come.

2. Police Accountability

Another significant concern in recent years is accountability for police departments. A common question that is raised is “Who should police the police?” New laws have been passed in numerous states across the country, addressing topics such as body cameras, use of force, no-knock warrants, disciplinary systems, civilian oversight and more.

Every law enforcement agency seeks to build trust between their officers and the community. In addition to policies enforced by state governments and other external agencies, leaders within police departments also have a large role to play. In an article published by Police1 , law enforcement leaders shared how they strive to develop cultures of accountability within their agencies, including:

• Aligning agency values with community values.
• Leading by example.
• Training first-line supervisors to hold their colleagues accountable.

3. Embracing Technological Advancements in Law Enforcement

When considering where law enforcement is headed in the next five years and beyond, embracing technology is another key challenge. Innovations can happen quickly, and some of the new technologies include:

• Biometrics: Handheld scanners and facial recognition tools that can improve the accuracy of identifying individuals.
• Gunshot Detectors: Sensors and mapping technologies that can detect gunshots within specific high-crime areas.
• Police Drones: Drones that can take photos of crime scenes and survey search areas.
• Vehicle Pursuit Darts: Foam darts that can be released by police vehicles and attach to a vehicle, allowing officers to track their movements with GPS.

For police chiefs, budgeting for these technological advances would be a significant concern, and some personnel may resist adopting new devices or software and feel stress about learning how to use the tech quickly.

4. Data-Driven Crime Prevention

The concept of using data in law enforcement is not a new one, but ongoing advancements in computing power can help this strategy become more viable for police departments. Predictive policing can use data to anticipate where and when crimes will occur, allowing agencies to strategically place their officers and potentially prevent crimes from happening. Intelligence-led policing takes the idea a step further, using data in attempts to identify potential victims and repeat offenders.

Departments do have some case studies available to review when considering predictive or intelligence-led strategies. In 2014, a study found that predictive software utilized by multiple police departments in the United States and United Kingdom reduced crime by 7.4%. Additionally, the High Point Police Department in North Carolina found that interventions with gangs were deterrents to future acts.

Using data in this way is not without its concerns. Opponents of these tactics raise points such as:

• The data used to make these decisions can be flawed due to the information originating from subjective input.
• Assigning more officers to patrol neighborhoods with high crime rates in the past can naturally lead to more arrests in that area, perpetuating the notion that such neighborhoods have more crime than others.
• Tracking individuals who are considered potential perpetrators – or potential victims – can border on an invasion of privacy.

As the power of big data and its potential applications in law enforcement grow every year, criminal justice decision-makers will continue to face the challenge of balancing citizen concerns with deploying new crime prevention strategies.

The challenges facing law enforcement leaders can change quickly. Whether it’s developing ways to retain officers or implementing crime prevention strategies without intruding upon the public’s trust, each day can come with new and complicated issues to address.

If you’re looking to move up in the ranks and stay connected with current trends in criminal justice, investing in education can be a wise decision. Police officers with college degrees are more likely to hold leadership positions, relate to their communities and identify best practices in the field.

Here at Columbia Southern University, we offer online criminal justice degrees at the associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree levels, as well as multiple continuing education options. To learn more about our online education options in criminal justice, visit our website .

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Research Will Shape the Future of Proactive Policing

Proactive policing — strategies and tools for stopping crime before it occurs — appears to be here to stay, but important challenges persist. Some relate to constructing more reliable measures of effectiveness — for instance, how to measure a strategy’s impact on crime when residents are reluctant to report it. Others are inherent in the approach, such as how to harmonize preventive strategies with community interests and protection of residents’ legal rights.

Research already in hand has persuaded leading criminologists that certain types of proactive policing, such as aspects of hot spots policing, can curb crime, especially in the near term and in targeted areas. Particularly in larger cities, law enforcement is leveraging powerful computer-based algorithms that analyze big data to isolate crime breeding grounds (place-based policing) and to pinpoint those likely to commit future offenses (person-based policing).

Where proactive policing theory and practice will lead law enforcement in coming years, researchers note, will depend in part on efforts to address research-related concerns such as:

• A need for wider use of more exacting research designs, such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), to better evaluate the merits and replicability of promising policing methods.
• A need for more accurate measures of program success or failure, given recognition of the insufficiency of conventional measures. (For example, a low rate of calls for police service could reflect residents’ reluctance to report crime, rather than low crime.)
• Continued progress in convincing law enforcement leaders to advance high-utility research by executing protocols with fidelity to the model and adopting scientifically sound best practices.

At the same time, proactive policing approaches face the challenge of maintaining or strengthening law enforcement’s connections with the community — by continually building trust and working to institutionalize respect for residents’ legal rights while targeting persons who commit violent offenses. One concern related to community interests is the potential for data analysis algorithms to skew proactive policing activities in communities.    

If past is prologue, NIJ will remain a principal driver of proactive policing research nationally by funding and managing empirical studies along the spectrum of proactive policing approaches. As NIJ Director David B. Muhlhausen observed in a January 2018 column, “The promise of proactive policing strategies makes it critical that we understand their effectiveness through rigorous and replicable research.” [1]

Muhlhausen acknowledged the impact of a recent comprehensive study of proactive policing by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, funded in part by NIJ. The November 2017 National Academies final report, Proactive Policing: Effects on Crime and Communities, concluded after scouring the field of research that certain proactive policing methods are succeeding at reducing crime. [2] At the same time, the National Academies pointed to extensive gaps in proactive policing research as well as evidence that certain once-promising proactive policing approaches have not proved to be effective.

Calling recent decades a “golden age” of policing research, the National Academies report urged intensified research assessing the promise of proactive policing. “Much has been learned over the past two decades about proactive policing practices,” the report states. “But, now that scientific support for these approaches has accumulated, it is time for greater investment in understanding what is cost effective, how such strategies can be maximized to improve the relationships between the police and the public, and how they can be applied in ways that do not lead to violations of the law by police.”

Defining Proactive Policing

The term “proactive policing” encompasses a number of methods designed to reduce crime by using prevention strategies. By definition, it stands in contrast to conventional “reactive” policing, which for the most part responds to crime that has occurred. The National Academies report underscored that the intended meaning of proactive policing is broad and inclusive: “This report uses the term ‘proactive policing’ to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Specifically, the elements of proactivity include an emphasis on prevention, mobilizing resources based on police initiative, and targeting the broader underlying forces at work that may be driving crime and disorder.”

The report identified four categories within proactive policing: place-based, person-focused, problem-oriented, and community-based. Exhibit 1 presents descriptions of these classifications and the primary policing strategies that fall under each.

Notes from Table

[table note 1] National Institute of Justice, “ How to Identify Hotspots and Read a Crime Map ,” May 2010.

[table note 2] National Institute of Justice, “ Predictive Policing ,” June 2014.

[table note 3] National Institute of Justice, CrimeSolutions, “ Practice Profile: Focused Deterrence Strategies .”

[table note 4] National Institute of Justice, CrimeSolutions, “ Program Profile: Stop, Question, and Frisk in New York City .”

[table note 5] National Institute of Justice, CrimeSolutions, “ Practice Profile: Problem-Oriented Policing .”

[table note 6] Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Community Policing Defined (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, April 2009), 3.

[table note 7] Tom Tyler, “What Are Legitimacy and Procedural Justice in Policing? And Why Are They Becoming Key Elements of Police Leadership?” in Legitimacy and Procedural Justice: A New Element of Police Leadership, ed. Craig Fisher (Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2014), 5, 9.

[table note 8] Tyler, “What Are Legitimacy and Procedural Justice in Policing?,” 9-10.

[table note 9] Robert J. Sampson and Stephen W. Raudenbush, Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods—Does It Lead to Crime ?, Research in Brief (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, February 2001), NCJ 186049; and George L. Kelling, “Broken Windows” and Police Discretion , Research Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, October 1999), NCJ 178259.

In the field, however, the lines between categories of proactive policing are often blurred. For example, William Ford, an NIJ physical scientist and senior science advisor, pointed out that a hot spots policing program — focusing resources on small, concentrated crime zones — may employ aspects of one or more other proactive policing approaches such as focused deterrence, community policing, or problem-oriented policing. That complexity can complicate evaluations of any one policing method.

History and NIJ’s Role

To discern NIJ’s role in proactive policing research going forward, Ford said, “Attention must be paid to the past, because we paved that ground.”

Early iterations of experimental proactive policing were innovative foot patrols focused on preventing crime and assessing the impact of patrolling squad cars. In the early 1970s, the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment yielded the fresh insight that routine patrolling in police cars was of limited value in preventing crime and making residents feel safer.

In the 1980s, studies of the source of 911 calls in Minneapolis helped lay the cornerstone of place-based policing, including hot spots techniques.

See the related article “From Crime Mapping to Crime Forecasting: The Evolution of Place-Based Policing”

In the 1990s, community policing took root, said Joel Hunt, NIJ senior computer scientist. By the 2000s, computers were supplanting push pins and wall-mounted crime maps. Data-driven policing strategies — typically employing algorithm-controlled electronic maps — began to emerge in the same decade, with extensive NIJ support. Focused deterrence, a strategy designed to discourage crime by confronting high-risk individuals and convincing them that punishment will be certain, swift, and severe, is a product of the current decade.

Collectively, research to date has discerned a stronger overall crime-reduction effect from place-based strategies — such as certain hot spots policing approaches — than from person-based strategies such as focused deterrence, Hunt noted. However, a recent meta-analysis of focused deterrence strategies by Anthony A. Braga, David Weisburd, and Brandon Turchan found that interventions that targeted gangs/groups and high-risk individuals were most effective in reducing crime. [3] The authors concluded that “the largest impacts are found for programs focused on the most violent offenders.” [4]

One example of a person-focused program initially falling short of expectations is the Strategic Subjects List pilot program implemented by the Chicago Police Department in 2013. The list consisted of 426 individuals calculated to be at highest risk of gun violence. The design called for interventions aimed at reducing violence by and toward those on the list, with a resultant reduction in the city homicide rate. An NIJ-sponsored study by RAND Corporation researchers found, however, that the Chicago pilot effort “does not appear to have been successful in reducing gun violence.” [5]

New NIJ funding is aimed at clarifying the factors informing commercial algorithms that drive certain proactive approaches, Hunt said. Work also continues on police legitimacy — establishing trust in the community’s eyes — and procedural justice, which falls under community policing.

Pushing for More Rigorous Research Methodologies

The National Academies and NIJ agree on the need for enhanced experimental program evaluations through rigorous RCTs. However, the conclusion by the National Academies that focused deterrence policy is effective is solely based on a number of quasi-experiments. RCTs randomly divide an experiment’s subjects into groups that receive the experimental treatment and control groups that do not. There is broad agreement that RCTs are generally the best methodology for establishing causality. To improve the scientific rigor of policing research, NIJ’s 2018 policing research solicitation made it clear that projects employing RCTs would be favored going forward.

As NIJ Director Muhlhausen explained during the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, “RCTs are a powerful tool in understanding what works and is scalable across contexts. When we know what works, we can fund what works.”

RCTs are valued as more reliable scientific methods not only for evaluating whether new policing methods work and can be replicated, but also for testing previous findings of less precise methods. For example, with support from NIJ and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, researchers employed RCTs to assess the effectiveness of a focused deterrence program model previously used to break up a drug market in a small Southern city. The original research, employing a quasi-experimental technique limited to that single site, found the treatment to be effective. But the subsequent RCT, using seven different areas, did not validate that finding: The treatment was found to be ineffective in three of five sites where implemented, while two sites were unable to implement it, researchers reported in 2017. [6]

NIJ scientists caution that RCTs, for all their benefits, are not a magic bullet for all experimental settings. “There are limits on situations in which they can be administered effectively,” said Hunt. For example, he said, “I can’t randomize where incidents occur, only the treatment, and then only in some cases.” Further, police chiefs can be reluctant to give a perceived treatment “benefit” to one group while denying it to control groups, Hunt added. RCTs can also be complex, partly because after the random assignment of subjects, researchers must examine key variables to ensure that treatments and control groups are properly split on those variables (e.g., age, race, and gender). RCTs can also be relatively costly to administer. However, RCTs are still the best research design available for establishing causality. NIJ strives to do RCTs wherever possible.

Representative Research in Process

NIJ’s 2017 grant solicitation statement in the policing strategies and practices area called for research on place- or person-based projects that can reduce crime “with minimal negative collateral consequences,” such as heightened community distrust of law enforcement. The 2017 solicitation thus embodied the NIJ five-year strategic plan’s emphasis on evaluating community engagement strategies and building community trust and confidence in law enforcement.

Two projects funded by NIJ in 2017 focus on evaluating the community impact of hot spots policing and problem-oriented policing initiatives, including development of new measures of law enforcement effectiveness. They are:

• A study of the impact of different strategies within hot spots on citizens’ perceptions of police in a Midwestern university town. The purpose is to demonstrate that police-community relations and police legitimacy can be strengthened, even in a hot spots policing environment.
• A 30-month RCT study of 100 hot spots in two medium-size Southeastern cities. The study is using community surveys designed to move “beyond unreported crime to also measure perceptions of safety, police legitimacy, and collective efficacy” (an overall community-police relations measurement). On the law enforcement side, the study team is also examining officer morale, officers’ perceptions of their roles, police-community relations, and the program’s impact on law enforcement policies and practice.

The 30-month study, with its call for new measures of the impact and effectiveness of policing methods, reflects a concern that simplistic measures of law enforcement success, such as number of arrests or citizen calls for service, are often misleading.

Demystifying Policing Algorithms

Algorithms inform law enforcement strategies by sorting and analyzing sometimes massive amounts of crime data to identify the highest risk places and individuals. NIJ currently supports research measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of commercial algorithms that are marketed to law enforcement agencies for crime mapping and related approaches. At the same time, NIJ scientists are comparing a naive algorithm model to contest entries from the Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge. (A naive model is one that assumes what happened before is what will happen next; e.g., the model forecasts that crime will occur this month in the place it occurred last month.)

Hunt, who is leading that in-house study, said commonplace scientific concerns with algorithm-dependent law enforcement strategies include the quality of data going in, how the data are introduced to the algorithm, and “what we do with the numbers at the back end.” Hunt observed that a crime data sample — and thus data-dependent algorithm output — can be biased when, for instance, community members no longer report crime.

Indeed, fewer than half of all violent and property crimes are reported to the police, according to the latest National Crime Victimization Survey. [7] Similarly, homicide clearance rates have reached near-record lows in several major U.S. cities due to increasing gang violence, witness intimidation, and a lack of community cooperation with law enforcement. [8] “Mutual cooperation between the police and the community is essential to solving crimes,” said NIJ Director Muhlhausen. “Unfortunately, some community members refuse to cooperate with criminal investigations, even though law enforcement is legitimately trying to serve and protect their community.”

Hunt said NIJ is pushing for greater transparency on the scientific foundations of support for commercial policing algorithms — that is, less of a “black box” approach by vendors. Academic researchers YongJei Lee, SooHyun O, and John E. Eck, the three members of a team that was among the winners of NIJ’s 2016 Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge, wrote that a lack of transparency and a “lack of theoretical support for existing forecasting software” are common problems with proprietary hot spots forecasting products. [9]

Procedural Justice

The National Academies report on proactive policing pointed to procedural justice as one of the methods lacking adequate research evidence to support — or to preclude — its effectiveness. NIJ is working to grow that evidence base through projects such as an ongoing police-university research partnership in a medium-size Mid-Atlantic city, funded in 2016. The research was designed to use surveys and other techniques to gauge police and citizen perceptions of procedural justice issues and to forge a better understanding of the benefits of procedural justice training, body-worn cameras, and the mechanisms of public cooperation, trust, and satisfaction.

One recent NIJ-supported study casts new doubt on the effectiveness of procedural justice training in a specific police application. The Seattle Police Department conducted training to “slow down” the thought processes of police officers during citizen encounters to reduce negative outcomes. The selected officers were deemed to be at risk because (1) they had worked in hot spots or other high-crime city areas, and (2) they had been involved in incidents in which they were injured or used force, or where a complaint had been filed about the officer or the incident.

As reported in NIJ’s CrimeSolutions.ojp.gov, a central web resource to help practitioners and policymakers learn what works in justice-related programs and practices, the Seattle Police procedural justice training initiative was rated as having “no effects,” positive or negative, on procedural justice in the community. [10] The rating was based on a study [11] utilizing an RCT of the program. The RCT found no statistically significant differences between the treatment group and the control group in the percentage of incidents resulting in an arrest, the number of times force was used, the number of incidents resulting in citizen complaints, and other key measures.

One challenge for research on justice-focused policing methods such as procedural justice and police legitimacy — as important as they may be to the ultimate goal of respecting citizens’ rights under law — has been distinguishing their impact from that of routine policing. Brett Chapman, an NIJ social science analyst, said of procedural justice generally that although the work is important, one “challenge is trying to demonstrate how it is dramatically different from what police have been doing for years.”

Research Quality Depends on Execution

Even if an experimental design is flawless, outcome quality can depend on agency cooperation and performance. For example, an NIJ-sponsored 2012 research report on a randomized trial of broken windows policing in three Western cities concluded that the results were negatively affected by problematic execution by the responsible law enforcement agencies. [12]

NIJ operates a national initiative designed to build law enforcement agency research competence. The Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) Scholars program develops the research capability of midcareer law enforcement professionals from agencies committed to infusing science into their policy and practice. LEADS scholars learn the latest research developments and carry that knowledge to the field.

Proactive Policing and the Fourth Amendment

On the street, the impact of proactive policing methods that involve law enforcement confronting suspects will be measured against the rule of law, including the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The boundaries concerning unlawful treatment of suspects by law enforcement are not always distinct. In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow [13] that police may conduct a street stop of a suspect with a lower threshold of reasonable suspicion if the stop occurs in a high-crime area. Thus, an individual’s particular location may effectively reduce his or her rights in a law enforcement interaction. Implicit in that location-specific adjustment of suspects’ rights is the Court’s recognition that, in those crime-prone areas, innocent citizens are at heightened risk of becoming victims of crime.

Rachel Harmon, a University of Virginia law professor, and a colleague pointed out in “Proactive Policing and the Legacy of Terry,” [14] “So long as police focus on high crime areas, they can effectively lower the behavior-based suspicious activity demanded for each stop.” Yet as scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and a colleague observed in 2008, [15] the Supreme Court has not defined a high-crime area for Fourth Amendment purposes.

Whether or to what extent a law enforcement strategy can exist in harmony with Fourth Amendment protections will depend on program particulars. In Floyd v. City of New York , [16] a federal district court held in 2013 that New York City’s stop and frisk policy at the time represented unconstitutional profiling and barred the practice. But the Floyd proscription was limited to excessive aspects of stop and frisk in New York.

David L. Weisburd, an author of the National Academies study and the executive director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, noted but took exception to a narrative he sees being advanced by some scholars and commentators that deterrence-based policing strategies make constitutional violations inevitable. In a 2016 paper in the University of Chicago Legal Forum specifically referencing hot spots policing, Weisburd posited “that hot spots policing properly implemented is likely to lead to less biased policing than traditional strategies. Moreover, there is little evidence that hot spots policing per se leads to abusive policing practices.” [17]

Rachel Harmon and her colleague sounded a similar theme, relative to stop and frisk policies, in her 2017 article referenced above: “Although the proactive use of stops and frisks may make constitutional violations more likely, it seems feasible to design a proactive strategy that uses stops and frisks aggressively and still complies with constitutional law.” [18]

The Harmon article further argued that proactive strategies such as hot spots and preventive policing can avoid constitutional peril “by narrowing proactive policing geographically rather than demographically.” Thus, in Harmon’s view, “the same focused strategies that are most likely to produce stops that satisfy the Fourth Amendment may also be the most likely to be carried out effectively and without discrimination.” [19]

Weisburd, in his 2016 paper, identified a need for new proactive programming that aspires to broad justice impacts. He called for “a new generation of programs and practices that attempts to maximize crime control and legitimacy simultaneously.” [20] The contemporary NIJ-supported, community-focused research noted above seeks new pathways for harmonizing proactive policing strategies with progress on community justice values

About this Article

This article was published as part of NIJ Journal issue number 281 , released October 2019.

[note 1] David B. Muhlhausen, “ Director’s Message: Proactive Policing — What We Know and What We Don’t Know, Yet ,” National Institute of Justice, January 17, 2018.

[note 2] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Proactive Policing: Effects on Crime and Communities (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018).

[note 3] Anthony A. Braga, David Weisburd, and Brandon Turchan, “Focused Deterrence Strategies to Reduce Crime: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Evidence,” Criminology & Public Policy 17 no. 1 (2018): 205-250.

[note 4] Braga et al., p. 239.

[note 5] Jessica Saunders, Priscillia Hunt, and John S. Hollywood, “Predictions Put Into Practice: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Chicago’s Predictive Policing Pilot,” Journal of Experimental Criminology 12 no. 3 (2016): 347, 366, doi:10.1007/s11292-016-9272-0.

[note 6] Jessica Saunders, Michael Robbins, and Allison J. Ober, “Moving from Efficacy to Effectiveness: Implementing the Drug Market Intervention Across Multiple Sites,” Criminology & Public Policy 16 no. 3 (2017).

[note 7] Rachel E. Morgan and Jennifer L. Truman, Criminal Victimization, 2017 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 2018), NCJ 252472.

[note 8] Aamer Madhani, “Unsolved Murders: Chicago, Other Big Cities Struggle; Murder Rate a 'National Disaster,’” USA Today , August 10, 2018.

[note 9] YongJei Lee, SooHyun O, and John E. Eck, “ A Theory-Driven Algorithm for Real-Time Crime Hot Spot Forecasting ,” NIJ award number 2016-NIJ-Challenge-0017, October 2017, 1.

[note 10] Program Profile: Procedural Justice Training Program (Seattle Police Department) , posted April 29, 2019.

[note 11] Emily Owens, David Weisburd, Karen L. Amendola, and Geoffrey P. Alpert, “Can You Build a Better Cop?” Criminology & Public Policy 17 no. 1 (2018): 41-87.

[note 12] Christine Femega, Joshua C. Hinkle, and David Weisburd, “Why Getting Inside the ‘Black Box’ Is Important: Examining Treatment Implementation and Outputs in Policing Experiments,” Police Quarterly 20 no. 1 (2017).

[note 13] 528 U.S. 119.

[note 14] Rachel Harmon and Andrew Manns, “Proactive Policing and the Legacy of Terry,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 15 no. 1 (2017): 49-71.

[note 15] Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and Damien Bernache, “The ‘High-Crime Area’ Question: Requiring Verifiable and Quantifiable Evidence for Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis,” American University Law Review 57 no. 6 (2008): 1587-1644.

[note 16] 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D. N.Y. 2013).

[note 17] David Weisburd, “Does Hot Spots Policing Inevitably Lead to Unfair and Abusive Police Practices, or Can We Maximize Both Fairness and Effectiveness in the New Proactive Policing?,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum (2016): 661.

[note 18] Harmon and Manns, “Proactive Policing and the Legacy of Terry,” 59.

[note 19] Harmon and Manns, “Proactive Policing and the Legacy of Terry,” 61.

[note 20] Weisburd, “Does Hot Spots Policing … ,” 686.

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Paul A. Haskins is a social science writer and contractor with Leidos.

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• NIJ Journal Issue No. 281

Law Awareness and Abidance and Radicalism Prevention Among Hong Kong Youth

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• Published: 03 June 2024

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• Chau-kiu Cheung   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3278-1633 1 &
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Social influence through awareness of law abidance and enforcement is uncertain in preventing youth radicalism. Accordingly, the effects of the social norm for law abidance and deterrence on radicalism are unclear or debatable. To clarify these effects, this study randomly surveyed 883 Chinese youth in Hong Kong, where the national security law has recently launched to tackle radicalism. Results show the significant inverse effects of awareness of national security law enforcement, awareness of support for law abidance, and agreement on law abidance on radicalism. Nevertheless, the effect of awareness of the enforcement slightly weakened with education, the agreement, or awareness of the support. This weakening suggests situational deterrence. These results imply the preventability of youth radicalism by law, including its awareness, abidance, and enforcement.

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Although radicalism, holding an extreme and possibly violent stance for change, is plausibly preventable by law, the prevention is uncertain and requires empirical research (Ferguson & McAuley, 2020 ; Ludigdo & Mashuric, 2021 ). Such plausibility stems from the awareness of the law, including its enforcement and abidance, premised on deterrence and norm theories. Deterrence theory proposes that law enforcement deters radicalism when criminal or illegal (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ; Johnston & Bose, 2020 ). Likewise, norm theory suggests that realizing and internalizing the social norm, which means the common practice of people in society, for law abidance proscribe radicalism when it is criminal or illegal (Johnston & Bose, 2020 ). Nevertheless, deterrence has appeared ineffective or counterproductive in preventing crime or violence (Drinkard et al., 2017 ). Such counter-production suggests that deterrence invokes radicalism (Tang & Chung, 2022 ). Whereas the antisocial social norm has induced crime or violence, the social norm for law abidance has not exhibited its preventive effect on radicalism (Mulla et al., 2019 ). The effects of deterrence and the law-abiding norm on radicalism are thus uncertain and require empirical clarification. Notably, radicalism, law non-abidance, and antisocial norms prevail more in the youth than older people (Farrington, 2018 ; Liu et al., 2023 ;

Vanclair & Fischer, 2011 ). Such youth characteristics are worth addressing (Botticher, 2017 ). Meanwhile, deterrence and norm theories may lapse when youth do not regard radicalism as criminal or illegal (Ludigdo & Mashuric, 2021 ). Such a possible lapse prompts the present study to clarify the effectiveness of the social influence of deterrence and the law-abiding social norm for preventing youth radicalism. This clarification thus informs the use of social influence for that prevention.

Radicalism is prevalent in youth to be socially disruptive, possibly causing violence and death (Ludigdo & Mashuric, 2021 ). Radicalism includes the practice or support for crime, extremism, illegality, and terrorism to achieve social change (Harpviken, 2021 ). It is adversarial, bumping, coercive, destructive, resistant, threatening, and not merely compromising, peaceful, silent, and sedentary, as in civil disobedience (Sedgwick, 2010 ; Wong et al., 2019 ). These features, which can be dehumanizing, plaguing, and polarizing, make radicalism noxious and objectionable (Berger, 2018 ). Moreover, radicalism can arise from conspiracism, prejudice, racism, and xenophobia, which are socially undesirable (Liu et al., 2023 ). Hence, radicalism necessitates prevention, including by law, notably for public order or national security (Sjoen & Jore, 2019 ).

The national security law applies to tackle dehumanizing, terrorism, political crime, and thus their grounds in radicalism against national governance or welfare (Sheikh, 2014 ). By imposing certain, severe, and swift punishment, this law has deterred aggression, deviance, and opposition and thus alleviated distress and ill-being (Sabia & Bass, 2017 ). This law is draconic and thus deterrent and threatening because it likens radicalism or violence to imperiling national security (Li et al., 2022 ; Sheikh, 2014 ). For such deterrence, the national security law started to apply to Hong Kong in mid-2020 (Baehr, 2022 ; Lee & Chan, 2023 ). The effectiveness of this law is a notable concern because the central government of China newly imposed the law on the regional administration of Hong Kong, where freedom from charges about national security had prevailed before (Baehr, 2022 ). Hong Kong youth are particularly fond of such freedom and are resistant to the national security law (Wong et al., 2022 ).

Meanwhile, their radicalism rests on localism, which glorifies Hong Kong and its autonomy, independence, and separation from China (Zamecki, 2018 ). Such resistance to and separation from China casts doubt on Hong Kong youth’s acceptance of and compliance with the national security law and, thus, its effectiveness (Wong et al., 2022 ). Notably, such resistance persists after national security law enforcement to fuel radicalism, such as incitement and preparation to attack the government or police with firearms for the separatist cause (Leung, 2022 ; Wong & Cheung, 2021 ). Nevertheless, radicalism diminishes in intensity, scope, and publicity after the enforcement (Lo & Hung, 2022 ; Zheng, 2020 ).

Awareness of national security law enforcement, including prosecution and sentencing, necessarily registers the effectiveness and, thus, the consequences of the law. Generally, awareness is a precondition for attitude and practice (Tan et al., 2022 ). Resultant attitudes include acceptance, belief, interest, and norm-setting, whereas resultant practices include civic, political, and social participation and transgression (Jovarauskaitė et al., 2020 ). According to a review of research in diverse contexts, awareness of pandemic law has fostered legally compliant, preventive, and protective practices (Bish & Michie, 2010 ). Besides its instrumental functions, awareness is commendable for realizing people’s capability, enlightenment, freedom, and rationality (Jin & Chen, 2020 ). Accordingly, the law is effective because of its awareness to uphold capable, enlightened, rational, and voluntary compliance.

Agreement on compliance or abidance by law is instrumental to securing a healthy and lawful instead of a risky life (Drinkard et al., 2017 ). Besides, such agreement is valuable for realizing the social contract, convention, rationality, and dutifulness and fairness underlying citizenship (Bertea, 2019 ). This agreement represents a personal asset or strength for development (Drinkard et al., 2017 ).

Awareness of people’s support for law abidance registers the corresponding social norm, which means an appropriate and widespread practice. Such awareness is valuable for showing or suggesting citizenship, knowledgeability, learning, morality, prosociality, social capital, and socialization (Bicchieri, 2017 ). Moreover, awareness of the legal or prosocial norm is instrumental to academic achievement and moral and socially responsible practices (Yang, 2017 ). This awareness is also a developmental asset (Benson et al., 2006 ). Furthermore, this awareness is natural and ubiquitous for socialization or social influence through social comparison or reference to prevent deviance (Mayet et al., 2012 ).

Deterrent and Normative Prevention of Radicalism

Radicalism is preventable by the social influence of awareness of national security law enforcement and the social norm for law abidance, according to deterrence and norm theories. Deterrence theory holds that awareness of punishment or related enforcement for criminal or illegal activity certainly, severely, and swiftly generates fear or a felt threat to deter the activity (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ). This theory rests on the supposed rational calculation of the cost of punishment or related enforcement. The theory has expounded deterrence against illegal activity in general (Sweeten et al., 2013 ). In this study, such awareness concerns national security law enforcement. Meanwhile, norm theory states that awareness of the social norm or custom engenders conformity to the norm (Waterman et al., 2022 ). This theory presumes social sensitivity to and assimilation of the social norm of collective consciousness. The theory has warranted the effects of illegal and prosocial social norms on illegal and prosocial activity, respectively (Canlas & Molino-Magtolis, 2023 ). In this study, such awareness concerns people’s support for law abidance. Hence, deterrence and norm theories and effects are distinguishable and independent. However, awareness of deterrence and the social norm concern law, which can be a common denominator confounding the effects of deterrence and the norm. In other words, deterrence and the norm can be correlated (Merhi & Ahluwalia, 2019 ). To avoid such confounding, the study needs to examine deterrence and norm effects simultaneously with the following hypotheses.

Awareness of national law enforcement is likely to deter radicalism based on deterrence theory. Such deterrence has arisen from such enforcement as legal education and intervention (Amjad, 2009 ). Moreover, radicalism has declined with awareness of its cost (Ebers & Stephan, 2022 ). Similarly, violence as a feature of radicalism has diminished with disciplining or punishment (Levitt & Lochner, 2001 ). Violence has also declined with awareness of arrest (Berger, 2005 ). More broadly, illegal activity as a feature of radicalism has eroded with such enforcement as incarceration and other punishment and their risk or threat (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ).

Awareness of people’s support for law abidance is likely to discourage radicalism based on norm theory. Typically, radicalism has risen with awareness of social norms for radicalism, including martyrdom and violence (Ferguson & McAuley, 2020 ; Ismail et al., 2022 ; Miconi et al., 2020 ; Tang et al., 2020 ). Violence has similarly evolved with awareness of social norms for delinquency, violence, or even victimization (Palacios et al., 2019 ). More generally, illegal activity has sprung with awareness of social norms for antisociality, crime, delinquency, deviance, violence, or illegal activity (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ). Conversely, illegal activity has shrunk with awareness of the social norm for morality (Brugman et al., 2003 ).

These two hypotheses require testing, considering their empirical uncertainty. Notably, deterrence theory has yet to secure clear empirical support (Dolling et al., 2009 ). Accordingly, radicalism has risen with awareness of imprisonment, repression, and threat as ways of deterrence (Ferguson & McAuley, 2020 ; Pfundmair & Mahr, 2023 ). Violence has also escalated with arrest, conviction, disciplining, and punishment as deterrence processes (Antunes & Ahlin, 2014 ). Likewise, illegal activity has increased with awareness of arrest, incarceration, involvement in or intervention from the justice system or police, legal sanctions, and penalties as deterrence processes (Hutcherson, 2012 ). Radicalism can also arise without considering its cost (Mukhitov et al., 2022 ). Hence, the punishment received has raised retaliation and violence (Antunes & Ahlin, 2014 ). Moreover, the expectation for punishment has not affected violence and illegal activity (van Rooij et al., 2017 ). Therefore, national security law enforcement awareness may instigate radicalism as a backfire (Lee & Chan, 2023 ; Kobayashi et al., 2021 ; Vickers & Morris, 2022 ).

Testing the hypotheses needs to control for agreement on law abidance and background characteristics, possibly confounding the hypothesized relationships. Such agreement or support for the law has impeded radicalism, illegal activity, and violence (Muthuswamy, 2022 ). The agreement may also raise awareness through selective attention (Sohn et al., 2012 ). Meanwhile, radicalism has been higher in the youth who has been irreligious, locally born, male, or younger than in the other (Harpviken, 2021 ). Additionally, illegal activity has been less frequent in the married youth than in the other (Miconi et al., 2020 ). Awareness has been higher in the youth with higher education, male gender, or native status than in the other (Ten Dam et al., 2020 ). Hence, these background characteristics may exert common influences on the awareness, agreement, and radicalism, thus confounding relationships among the latter.

Situational Deterrence

The deterrent effect is likely to be weaker in the presence of other factors, according to situational (action) theory (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ). This theory reasons that the other factors interfere with the situational calculation of punishment cost. Hence, self-control and friends’ morality have diminished the deterrent effect of expected punishment (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ). This theory thus regards the deterrent effect as situational. Based on this theory, awareness of national security law enforcement is less likely to prevent radicalism when agreement on law abidance or awareness of support for law abidance is higher. In other words, the inverse effect of awareness of the enforcement is likely to be weaker when the agreement or awareness of the support is higher. Nevertheless, such situational deterrence requires empirical examination, considering the contradictory findings available (Pauwels et al., 2011 ).

The examination in Hong Kong is felicitous for its bridging role in exchanging upgraded knowledge between the East and West (Lui, 2014 ). This role builds on cultural, economic, and political compatibility between Hong Kong and other places because of its geography and history as the entrance of China and East Asia (Zamecki, 2018 ). Meanwhile, Hong Kong integrates administrative and cultural features from other places, making it distinctive and crucial for testing and generalizing knowledge developed from others. Such distinctiveness lies in emerging radicalism in massive protests featuring arson, blocking, vandalism, and violence fueled by localism, nativism, and media connectivity (Tang et al., 2020 ; Zamecki, 2018 ). Radicalism is glaring and nascent as it defies harmony, lawfulness, and peacefulness conventionally practiced according to Chinese or Confucian ethos in Hong Kong (Lee & Chiu, 2018 ). The national security law and its enforcement are also new to Hong Kong since its return to China (Baehr, 2022 ; Lee & Chan, 2023 ). Such changes in radicalism and law amplify the significance of building new knowledge by scrutinizing the relationship between radicalism and law abidance, notably regarding national security.

To recapitulate, the following two hypotheses about the social influence on the youth’s radicalism derive from deterrence and norm theories.

Radicalism declines with awareness of national security law enforcement.

Radicalism declines with awareness of support for law abidance.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, a random-sample telephone survey of 883 Chinese youths (aged 18–24 years) in Hong Kong provided data for statistical analysis. Such sampling started with a random extraction of telephone numbers from the territory-wide residential telephone directory database, followed by randomly selecting a youth, if available, in each residence contacted through the telephone numbers. The household telephone survey has been more representative and workable than the mobile telephone survey, which has been biased, interrupted, costly, and inadvisable (Badcock et al., 2017 ; He et al., 2018 ). A trained survey interviewer ensured the anonymity, confidentiality, quality, and voluntariness of the selected youths’ informed consent and responses to the survey, according to the procedure approved by a research ethics committee. The survey contacted 1,499 residences with Chinese youths on weekday evenings and weekend daytime and evenings to attain a response rate of 58.9%. This rate was higher than the typical rate of 25%, suggesting youth’s higher cooperativeness (Keeter et al., 2006 ). The resultant sample with complete data for analysis afforded to test a considerably weak effect (| r | > 0.094) with 95% statistical confidence and 80% statistical power.

Participants

The youths averaged 20.9 years in age and 15.0 years in educational grade (see Table  1 ). Among them, 55.0% were female, 81.6% were locally born, 13.8% were born in Mainland China, 85.6% were irreligious, 10.9% lived with their spouses, and 3.0% lived alone. These characteristics functioned as control variables for testing the hypothesized effects.

Measurement

The survey measured each youth’s radicalism, agreement on law abidance, awareness of support for law abidance, and awareness of national security law enforcement with multiple rating items (see Table  2 ). The items appeared randomly within sections to minimize biases due to similar preceding items (Tourangeau et al., 2000 ). Before factor analysis, the items scored on a 0-100 scale, with 0 for the lowest level of “none” and 100 for the highest level of ‘very much.” Remarkably, self-reported radicalism, law-abidance, and antisocial and prosocial norms have been valid for predictive analysis (Kennedy et al., 2018 ; Shahzalal & Adnan, 2022 ; Vitaro et al., 2015 ; Wong et al., 2019 ).

Radicalism in the previous month, as the outcome of the analysis, combined six items, such as the acts of “supporting radical actions” and “bumping in support of demonstrations” (Wong et al., 2019 ). The internal consistency reliability ( α ) was 0.911.

Awareness of national security law enforcement in the previous semi-year as the predictor of radicalism combined five items, such as those concerning awareness of “education for the national security law” and “prosecution under the national security law” (Shek et al., 2022 a). This measure thus covered the implementation and consequences of the national security law in Hong Kong. The internal consistency reliability ( α ) was 0.814.

Awareness of support for law abidance in the previous semi-year as the predictor of radicalism combined four items, such as those concerning people’s support for “law abidance being fair” and “law abidance being national” (Akers, 1998 ). The internal consistency reliability ( α ) was 0.797.

Agreement on law abidance in the previous semi-year as the predictor of radicalism combined three items, such as those concerning “law abidance being fair” and “obeying the law to avoid confusion” (Akers, 1998 ). The internal consistency reliability ( α ) was 0.657.

Testing the hypotheses required measures free of the method artifact of acquiescent rating (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). Such measures were the trait factors distilled from confirmatory factor analysis to be distinct from the method artifact factor (using robust maximum likelihood estimation via M plus , Muthen & Muthen, 2006 ). This identification thus verified the factorial validity of the measures, with the convergence of items to their respective discriminable factors.

Hypothesis testing using the trait factors tackled the potential endogeneity (i.e., intercorrelation) problem among the factors by two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation (Jaeger, 2008 ). This estimation required the first stage to use background characteristics as instrumental variables to generate predicted trait factors for estimation in the second stage, focusing on predicting radicalism as the latest outcome.

Assessing the stability of the hypothesized effects across conditions engaged interactions between awareness of national law enforcement and support for law abidance and others. Each interaction was a product of two predictors, based on their standard scores, to minimize the problem of multicollinearity in estimation (Dunlap & Kemery, 1987 ).

Before factor analysis, the youth’s radicalism, on average, was not low ( M  = 35.5 on a 0-100 scale, see Table  1 ). On average, the youth’s agreement on law abidance and awareness of support for law abidance and national security law enforcement were modest ( M  = 46.5–50.6). Hence, there was room for attenuating the youth’s radicalism and raising the youth’s law abidance.

The trait factors of radicalism, agreement on law abidance, and awareness of support for law abidance and national security law enforcement were identifiable from confirmatory factor analysis. This analysis showed the convergence of items on their respective factors substantially constrained to be independent of the method factor ( λ  = 0.649-0.706 for radicalism, λ  = 0.351-0.521 for awareness of national law enforcement, λ  = 0.315-0.452 for awareness of support for law abidance, and λ  = 0.594-0.606 for agreement on law abidance, see Table  2 ). Such factorial validity stood on the good fit of the analysis ( L 2 (718) = 1,869, SRMR = 0.040, RMSEA = 0.027, CFI = 0.944, Marsh et al., 2004 ).

In the first stage preceding hypothesis testing, background characteristics were generally significantly predictive of agreement on law abidance and awareness of support for law abidance and national security law enforcement. Most notable was the lower agreement ( β = − 0.170, see Table  3 ) and awareness about law abidance ( β = − 0.154) and the higher awareness of the enactment ( β  = 0.155) in the locally born youth than the other. Additionally, the agreement was higher in the youth living with the spouse or alone, younger, higher in education, or not locally born. Awareness of support for law abidance was lower in the youth who was locally born, irreligious, or not living alone. By contrast, awareness of national security law enforcement was higher in the youth who was locally born, religious, higher in education, or younger.

Hypothesis testing supported Hypotheses 1 and 2 concerning the decline of rationalism with awareness of national security law enforcement and support for law abidance. Supporting Hypothesis 1, awareness of the enforcement in the previous semi-year displayed a significant strong inverse effect on radicalism in the previous month ( β = − 0.492 and − 0.496 based on OLS and 2SLS estimations, see Table  4 ). Similarly, supporting Hypothesis 2, awareness of support for law abidance in the semi-year manifested a significant strong inverse effect on radicalism in the previous month ( β = − 0.367 and − 0.572 based on OLS and 2SLS estimations). These effects were net of the significant moderate inverse effect of the agreement on law abidance in the previous semi-year on radicalism in the previous month ( β = − 0.265 and − 0.351 based on OLS and 2SLS estimations). Additionally, the hypothesized effects were net of those of background characteristics. Without controlling the agreement and awareness, radicalism was significantly higher in the youth with lower education, older age, native status, male gender, not having religious faith, or not living with a spouse or living alone (see Table  4 ).

The hypothesized effects hardly varied substantially across conditions, even though some variations were statistically significant. Only two variations or interaction effects displayed adequate statistical power ( β > |0.068|). One was the positive effect of the interaction between agreement on law abidance and national security law enforcement awareness on radicalism ( β = − 0.085, see Table  5 ). The effect suggested that the agreement weakens the inverse effect of that awareness on radicalism. Similarly, the effect of the interaction between awareness of support for law abidance and awareness of national security law enforcement on radicalism was significantly positive ( β  = 0.054). That is, awareness of the support weakened the inverse effect of awareness of the enforcement. Another sufficiently powerful effect was the positive effect of the interaction between education and enforcement awareness on radicalism ( β  = 0.084). This interaction effect suggested that education weakened the inverse effect of awareness of the enforcement.

The statistical analysis supported the two hypotheses that radicalism declines with awareness of national security law enforcement and law abidance. Additionally, agreement on law abidance increased with awareness of national security law enforcement, given the control for background characteristics. Moreover, these characteristics did not substantially alter hypothesized relationships. These findings emerge from Hong Kong youth having modest levels of awareness of national law enforcement and law abidance and agreement on law abidance and a lower but nonnegligible level of radicalism on average (see Table  1 ). Such levels echo similar findings and reflect their radical bases (Tang & Chung, 2022 ; Yu et al., 2023 ; Zheng, 2020 ). For instance, the locally-born youth reported higher radicalism and awareness of national security law enforcement and lower awareness of and agreement on law abidance than the other youth (see Tables  3 and 4 ). These differences reflect the influences of localism, which evolves from locally-born status (Tang & Chung, 2022 ; Zamecki, 2018 ).

More specifically, hypotheses that radicalism declines with awareness of national security law enforcement and people’s support for law abidance attained support. The hypothesized inverse effects were strong (| β | > 0.4) even adjusted for endogeneity and considerably stable across conditions (i.e., absolute standardized interaction effect < 0.1), thus endorsing deterrence and norm theories underlying the hypotheses. Accordingly, deterrence theory and norm theory, respectively, warrant the inverse effects of awareness of national security law enforcement and awareness of support for law abidance on radicalism. In other words, youth radicalism is preventable by legal deterrence and proscription (Streitwieser et al., 2019 ).

Awareness Effects

For deterrence theory, awareness of the enforcement is likely to affirm the certainty, severity, and swiftness of the national security law to deter radicalism through threatening (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ). Accordingly, the national security law imposes severe punishment after sure and swift arrests to curb further insecurity (Lee & Chan, 2023 ; Tung et al., 2021 ). The law is also an appropriate response to radicalism for quenching its continuation or escalation (Koehler, 2017 ). The deterrent effect also reflects the youth’s tendency to use the information for hedonistic choices to obtain pleasure and avoid pain (Cote, 2014 ). Specifically, the deterrent effect reveals the Hong Kong youth’s valuation of enjoyment and support for law enforcement (Wu et al., 2013 ). According to deterrence theory, these youth’s inclinations operate in deterrence (Pauwels et al., 2011 ; Schulz, 2014 ).

The norm effect registers the youth’s gregariousness and relational sensitivity (Cote, 2014 ). Precisely, the norm effect echoes the Hong Kong youth’s interdependence, social sensitivity, and susceptibility to media influence (Wong & Au-Yeung, 2018 ). Such interdependence, sensitivity, and susceptibility establish peer and media influences as norms to propagate and raise radicalism (Tang et al., 2020 ; Zheng, 2020 ). According to norm theory, these youth’s tendencies underlie the norm effect (Ramiro et al., 2019 ). Additionally, the norm for law abidance is likely to be normative because the law is typically normative, universally applicable, and forceful (Bertea, 2019 ). To the youth, the social norm also represents an asset conducive to development and socialization, thus meriting the youth’s conformity (Mayet et al., 2012 ). The youth cares about such conformity to achieve social approval (Massengale et al., 2017 ). While social norms for deviance influence the youth, social norms for morality or prosociality are at least equally influential because their conformity draws social support to become normative (Bryan et al., 2014 ).

Albeit weak, the statistically significant variations or the interaction effects illustrate situational deterrence, ensuing from the elaboration of deterrence theory by situational theory. The significant reductions in the deterrence effect due to education, agreement on law abidance, and awareness of support for law abidance indicate interference with the situational consideration of deterrence based on awareness of national security law enforcement. These reductions indicate that education, the agreement, and the social norm for law abidance preempted the deterrence effect. Such preemption echoes those driven by morality and self-control covered in situational theory (Schepers & Reinecke, 2018 ). Accordingly, education and law abidance are commensurate or compatible with morality and self-control (Drinkard et al., 2017 ; Hudson & Brandenberger, 2022 ).

Among other significant but weak variations or interaction effects, the strengthened effect of the interaction or combination of agreement on law abidance and awareness of support for law abidance notably exhibits the advantage of the combination. Accordingly, the attitude and norm are complementary to each other. The complementarity effect grows with compatibility between the attitude and norm (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2014 ). More generally, this effect escalates with the fit between the person and environment, respectively corresponding to the attitude and norm (Kwon, 2019 ). As such, the norm and attitude or agreement reinforce the effect of one another.

Background Effects

Significant but slight variations in the effects of the agreement and awareness on radicalism due to the birthplace (i.e., being locally born vs. others) or native status are noteworthy. Accordingly, native status strengthened the effects of the agreement on law abidance and awareness of national security law enforcement and weakened the effect of awareness of support for law abidance. Such variations reflect the specific influence of Hong Kong due to Westernization (Wang & Chang, 2010 ). This influence enhances the individualistic effects and erodes the collectivistic effect (Ma, 2019 ; Narvaez, 2014 ). Hence, the individualistic effects of agreement and deterrence strengthened with native status, and the collectivistic effect of the social norm weakened with native status. Additionally, agreement and awareness about law abidance were significantly lower, and national security law enforcement awareness was significantly higher in the native than the others. Such differences are again attributable to the Westernization of Hong Kong natives to avoid legal control (Narvaez, 2014 ).

Limitations and Future Research

Limitations in the cross-sectional design, self-report measurement, and sampling in a Chinese Hong Kong society happen to the study. This design could not ensure the temporal order for prediction, and the measurement might not be objective enough. Hence, the effects of the agreement and awareness on radicalism might occur concurrently, even with the adjustment for endogeneity, and the measurement best reflected perceptions. Moreover, the sample in Hong Kong might be distinctive in its incorporation of Western culture into Chinese tradition. As such, the hypothesized relationships exhibited slight differentials between the native and other, suggesting the enhanced individualistic effect and abated collectivistic effect due to Westernization. These limitations and possibilities require future research to address. Future research can employ experimental and panel designs to strengthen prediction and causal inference, multiple measurements to strengthen objectivity, and samples from diverse sociocultural contexts to strengthen generalizability. The experimental design can communicate support for law abidance and national security law enforcement and induce agreement on law abidance, typically in a controlled or laboratory setting to assess the change in radicalism. Alternatively, the panel survey can measure the agreement, awareness, and radicalism repeatedly to gauge the change in radicalism in a real-life setting. The measurement can combine multiple sources, including the youth and his or her associates, to boost objectivity. Notably, measuring the impact of the law-abidance norm directly can supplement the statistical analysis of the impact. Future research can utilize samples from diverse contexts to scrutinize the generality and specificity of findings and their variations due to contextual factors, including culture and Westernization.

Theoretical Implications

The inverse effects of awareness of national law enforcement and law abidance on radicalism warrant the relevance of deterrence and norm theories to deradicalization in youth. Such relevance rests on the rational calculation and social sensitivity and responsivity underlying the theories, respectively (Hirtenlehner & Schulz, 2021 ; Waterman et al., 2022 ). This relevance also dismisses contradicting views about the counterproductive effects of deterrence and the legal norm. Moreover, the weakened deterrence effect of awareness of national security law enforcement due to law abidance and its social norm supports the situational formulation of deterrence theory. This formulation reveals that norm conformity partly preempts the rational calculation underly deterrence. Additionally, both deterrence and norm effects of the law benefit from mediation by agreement on the law. These moderation and mediation effects thus enrich the generating mechanisms of deterrence and norm theories.

Practical Implications

For preventing youth radicalism, law abidance, its social norm, and national security law enforcement, including education, prosecution, and sentencing, are recommendable for promotion. Such promotion builds on deterrence and norm theories to establish the deterrent and normative effects of law abidance and national security law enforcement. Accordingly, the enforcement needs to be certain, severe, and swift, and law abidance needs to prevail. Crucially, the enforcement and norm need to be the focus of youth’s awareness, which, in turn, needs to be the focus of promotion. Specifically, promoting enforcement awareness is more preventive for youth with lower education, agreement on law abidance, or awareness of support for law abidance. This promotion builds on situational deterrence informed by situational theory. Establishing the law, including its enforcement, abidance, and corresponding social awareness, is the foundation for preventing radicalism (Zhou, 2017 ). Additionally, such prevention hinges on establishing the law as socially normative (Clubb & O’Connor, 2019 ).

Education is helpful for deradicalization as education has proven effective in raising abidance by the national security law (Shek et al., 2022 ). Such education can facilitate rational calculation and social sensitivity to learn about the merit and norm or popularity of the national security law to capitalize on deterrence and norm effects. This facilitation benefits from discussion, explanation, sharing, and support among educators and youth (Grygiel, 2013 ; Seal & Harris, 2016 ; Shek et al., 2022 ). Accordingly, discussion, explanation, and sharing about the merit and norm of the national security law and its abidance among supportive people helps nurture the abidance. This nurturing aims to advance intelligence and wisdom, including the social aspects of responsiveness and responsibility (Grygiel, 2013 ; Sternberg, 2003 ). Hence, such advancement is to make the abidance rationally and socially viable.

Preventing radicalism is more needed for youths who are older, lower in education, locally born, male, irreligious, or not living with spouses or living alone. This need is observable elsewhere (Del Pino-Brunet et al., 2023 ; Harpviken, 2021 ; Jakubowska et al., 2021 ; Miconi et al., 2020 ). Such prevention requires promoting youth’s agreement on law abidance, awareness of support for law abidance, and awareness of national security law enforcement. Promoting the agreement is higher in need for youths who are older, locally born, lower in education, or not living with spouses or not living alone. This need also happens elsewhere (Dong & Zeb, 2022 ; Drinkard et al., 2017 ). Promoting awareness of support for law abidance is more needed for youths locally born, irreligious, or not living alone. Likewise, promoting awareness of national security law enforcement is higher in need for youths who are irreligious, older, lower in education, or not locally born.

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Those subterfuges in the United States, it turned out, were only a prelude to a more prominent and potentially more ominous campaign of deception he has been conducting from Russia.

Mr. Dougan, 51, who received political asylum in Moscow, is now a key player in Russia’s disinformation operations against the West. Back in 2016, when the Kremlin interfered in the American presidential election, an army of computer trolls toiled for hours in an office building in St. Petersburg to try to fool Americans online.

Today Mr. Dougan may be accomplishing much the same task largely by himself, according to American and European government officials and researchers from companies and organizations that have tracked his activities since August. The groups include NewsGuard, a company that reviews the reliability of news and information online; Recorded Future, a threat intelligence company; and Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.

Working from an apartment crowded with servers and other computer equipment, Mr. Dougan has built an ever-growing network of more than 160 fake websites that mimic news outlets in the United States, Britain and France.

With the help of commercially available artificial intelligence tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has filled the sites with tens of thousands of articles, many based on actual news events. Interspersed among them are also bespoke fabrications that officials in the United States and European Union have attributed to Russian intelligence agencies or the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Between September and May, Mr. Dougan’s outlets have been cited or referred to in news articles or social media posts nearly 8,000 times, and seen by more than 37 million people in 16 languages, according to a report released Wednesday by NewsGuard .

The fakes have recently included a baseless article on a fake San Francisco Chronicle website that said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had smuggled 300 kilograms of cocaine from Argentina. Another false narrative appeared last month in the sham Chronicle and on another site, called The Boston Times, claiming that the C.I.A. was working with Ukrainians to undermine Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

Mr. Dougan, in a series of text exchanges and one telephone interview with The New York Times, denied operating the sites. A digital trail of clues, including web domains and internet protocol addresses, suggests otherwise, the officials and researchers say.

A friend in Florida who has known Mr. Dougan for 20 years, Jose Lambiet, also said in a telephone interview that Mr. Dougan told him in January that he had created the sites.

Steven Brill, a founder of NewsGuard, which has spent months tracking Mr. Dougan’s work, said he represented “a massive incursion into the American news ecosystem.”

“It’s not just some guy sitting in his basement in New Jersey tapping out a phony website,” he added.

Mr. Dougan’s emergence as a weapon of the Kremlin’s propaganda war follows a troubled life in the United States that included home foreclosures and bankruptcy. As a law enforcement officer in Florida and Maine, he faced accusations of excessive use of force and sexual harassment that resulted in costly lawsuits against the departments he worked for.

He faces an arrest warrant in Florida — its records sealed by court order — on 21 felony charges of extortion and wiretapping that resulted from a long-running feud with the sheriff of Palm Beach County.

Mr. Dougan’s activities from Moscow, where he fled in 2016 one step ahead of those charges, continue to draw scrutiny from the authorities in the United States. Last year, he impersonated an F.B.I. agent in a telephone call to Mr. Brill, according to an account by Mr. Brill to be published next week in a new book, “The Death of Truth.”

Mr. Dougan, who acknowledged making the call in a text message this week, had been angered by a NewsGuard report in February 2023 that criticized YouTube for allowing videos parroting Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine, including some by Mr. Dougan.

In a rambling, profanity-laced video in response on YouTube last year, Mr. Dougan posted excerpts from the call with Mr. Brill and showed a Google Earth satellite photograph of his home in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City — “just down the road from the Clinton crime family,” as Mr. Dougan put it, referring to the home of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The call prompted an F.B.I. investigation that, according to Mr. Brill, traced the call to Mr. Dougan’s telephone in Russia. (A spokeswoman for the bureau did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation or Mr. Dougan’s previous activities.)

A History in Law Enforcement

Mr. Dougan began to hone the skills that he is putting to use today during a turbulent childhood in the United States. In the written responses to questions for this article, he said he had struggled at home and in school, bullied because of Tourette’s syndrome, but found a passion in computers. When he was 8, he said, the man who would become his stepfather began teaching him to write computer code.

“By the time I was 16,” he wrote in one response, “I knew a dozen different programming languages.”

After a four-year stint in the Marine Corps, which he claims he offered to join in lieu of a jail sentence for fleeing a police stop for speeding on a motorcycle, he became a police officer first in a small force in Mangonia Park, Fla., and then the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office from 2005 to 2009.

According to news reports and his own accounts over the years, Mr. Dougan repeatedly clashed with superiors and colleagues, facing numerous internal investigations that he said were retaliatory because he objected to police misconduct, including instances of racial bias.

In 2009, he moved briefly to Windham, Maine, to work in another small-town police department. There he faced a complaint of sexual harassment that resulted in his dismissal before he completed his probationary period.

Mr. Dougan started a website called WindhamTalk to defend himself. The website foreshadowed others he would create, including one devoted to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, PBSOTalk.

After moving back to Florida, he used PBSOTalk to torment in particular the department’s elected sheriff, Ric L. Bradshaw, whom he accused of corruption. He posted the unlawful recordings of “Jessica” chatting with a former detective commander, Mark Lewis, who, Mr. Dougan claimed, was investigating the sheriff’s critics, including himself. As Mr. Dougan acknowledged in a video interview last year, it is illegal in Florida to record a telephone conversation without permission.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, Therese C. Barbera, said Mr. Dougan was “a wanted felon for cyberstalking using unsubstantiated and fabricated claims that have NO factual basis.”

In February 2016, PBSOTalk posted confidential information about thousands of police officers, federal agents and judges. The next month, F.B.I. agents and local police officers searched Mr. Dougan’s home, seizing all of his electronic equipment.

Fearing arrest, he said, he made his way to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony charges the next year.

Peddling Russia Propaganda

In Russia, Mr. Dougan refashioned himself as a kind of journalist, documenting his travels around the country, including Lake Baikal in Siberia and Crimea, the peninsula in Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014 in violation of international law.

He posted photographs and videos from those trips on YouTube, which suspended his channel after NewsGuard’s report last year. He also appeared regularly on state media, including with two former intelligence operatives, Maria Butina , who penetrated Republican political circles, and Anna Chapman , one of 10 spies who inspired the television series “The Americans.”

In 2021, as Mr. Putin began mobilizing the military forces that would invade Ukraine, Mr. Dougan posted a video that the Kremlin would cite as one justification for its attack. In it, he claimed that the United States operated biological weapons factories in Ukraine, an accusation that Russia and its allies have pushed without ever providing evidence .

Once the war started, Mr. Dougan recounted in his written responses to questions, he traveled to Ukraine 14 times to report from the Russian side of the front lines. He appeared in Russian government hearings purporting to expose Ukraine’s transgressions, indicating some level of cooperation with the government authorities.

He has faced criticism for the reports, including in a profile in The Daily Beast, that he posted on YouTube and other platforms. Mr. Dougan has portrayed the war much as Russia’s propaganda has: as a righteous battle against neo-Nazis backed by a decadent West, led by the United States and NATO.

“The West has consistently lied about every aspect of this conflict,” he wrote. “Why does only one side get to tell their story?”

Fake News Sites in the U.S.

In April 2021, Mr. Dougan revived a website called DC Weekly, which had been created four years earlier and published fake articles about the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. According to a report last December by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, the domain and internet protocol address were shared by PBSOTalk and Mr. Dougan’s personal website, as well as two marketing books he wrote in exile and a security firm he operated, Falcon Eye Tech, which offered “offshore security monitoring services.”

After Russia’s assault on Ukraine began in 2022, the site carried articles about the war.

Then, last August, the site began to publish articles based on elaborate fabrications that the Western government officials and disinformation researchers said came from Russia’s propaganda units. They often appeared first in videos or audio recordings on obscure X accounts or YouTube channels, then spread to sites like DC Weekly and then to Russian state media as if they were authentic accusations, a process researchers call “narrative laundering.”

The baseless narratives included claims that relatives or cronies of Ukraine’s leader secretly bought luxury properties, yachts or jewelry, and that Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III of Britain, had abducted and abused children during a secret visit to Ukraine.

Dozens of new sites have appeared in recent months. They included ones made to look like local news outlets: The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Times, The Flagstaff Post and The Houston Post. Some hijacked names of actual news organizations, like The San Francisco Chronicle, or approximated them, in the case of one called The New York News Daily.

When The New York Times reported on the new sites in March, DC Weekly published a lengthy response in a stilted style that indicated the use of artificial intelligence. It was written under the name Jessica Devlin, one of the fictitious journalists on the site. “I’m not a shadowy foreign actor,” the article said.

At the end, the article invited media inquiries at an email address with the domain Falcon Eye Tech.

Two days later, Mr. Dougan answered.

103 New Sites in Two Days

Mr. Dougan, who became a Russian citizen last year and voted in the country’s presidential election in March, said in his messages to The Times that he made a living by selling security devices he designed for a manufacturer in China. He denied being paid by any Russian authorities, claiming he funds his activities himself.

His friend Mr. Lambiet, a private investigator and former journalist, said he considered Mr. Dougan a good man but cautioned that Mr. Dougan had a propensity to make things up. “He’s like a Russian disinformation campaign: It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not,” he said.

As evidence of Mr. Dougan’s role in the news sites has emerged, he has shifted tactics. Recorded Future, the threat intelligence company, released a report this month that detailed his ties to agencies linked to the Russian disinformation. The report documented the extensive use of A.I., which one of the company’s researchers, Clément Briens, estimated made Mr. Dougan’s work far cheaper than hiring a troll army.

At the time, Recorded Future identified 57 domains that Mr. Dougan had created. In a two-day span after the report was published, 103 new sites appeared, all on a server in California.

“He’s trying to obfuscate the Russian links,” Mr. Briens said.

Mr. Dougan at times treats his activities as a game of cat and mouse. He spent months engaging with a researcher at NewsGuard, McKenzie Sadeghi, revealing details of his life in Moscow while mocking her boss, Mr. Brill.

“He seemed to be toying with me, both to elicit my responses and, it seemed, to show off his talent for global online mischief, without actually admitting anything,” she wrote in the report published on Wednesday.

While Mr. Dougan’s sites have focused on Russian narratives about the war in Ukraine, the researchers and government officials say he has laid the foundation for interference in the unusually large confluence of elections taking place around the world this year.

This suggests a “risk of an expanded operation scope in the near future, potentially targeting diverse audiences and democratic systems in Europe and other Western nations for various strategic objectives,” the diplomatic service of the European Union wrote in a report last month when the network included only 23 websites.

In recent weeks, the sites have included themes that seem intended to stoke the partisan fires in the United States before November’s presidential election.

Last month, articles appeared on two of Mr. Dougan’s newer fake sites, The Houston Post and The Flagstaff Post, detailing a baseless claim that the F.B.I. had planted an eavesdropping device in Mr. Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Some of the new sites have names, like Right Review and Red State Report, that suggest a conservative political bent. In April, a site that researchers also linked to Mr. Dougan offered “major cryptocurrency rewards” for leaks of information about American officials, singling out two prosecutors and a judge involved in the criminal cases against Mr. Trump.

“If the site was mine,” he wrote in response to a question about it, “I would want people to give documents on any dirty politician, Republican, Democrat or other.”

Read by Steven Lee Myers

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán .

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

Russian disinformation sites linked to former Florida deputy sheriff, research finds

More than 150 fake local news websites pushing Russian propaganda to U.S. audiences are connected to John Mark Dougan, an American former law enforcement officer living in Moscow, according to a research report published Wednesday by NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation.

The websites, with names like DC Weekly, New York News Daily and Boston Times, look similar to those of legitimate local news outlets and have already succeeded in spreading a number of false stories surrounding the war in Ukraine. Experts warn they could be used to launder disinformation about the 2024 election. 

In an interview over WhatsApp, Dougan denied involvement with the websites. “Never heard of them,” he said. 

Dougan, a former Marine and police officer, fled his home in Florida in 2016 to evade criminal charges related to a massive doxxing campaign he was accused of launching against public officials and was given asylum by the Russian government. Most recently, Dougan has posed as a journalist in Ukraine’s Donbas region, testifying at Russian public hearings and making frequent appearances on Russian state TV . 

He’s now part of a small club of Western expats who have become purveyors of English-language propaganda for Russia. Researchers and cybersecurity companies had previously linked Dougan to the sites. The NewsGuard report published Wednesday is the latest to implicate him in the fake news ring. 

Academic research from Clemson University linked Dougan to the network of fake news websites last year after one of them was found to share an IP address with other sites he ran, including his personal website.

In an interview, Darren Linvill, co-director of the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, called Dougan “a tool of the broader Russian disinformation machine” whose websites “are just one of several mechanisms by which these narratives are distributed.”

Linvill noted the fake news websites had lately veered away from the narrow focus of undermining support for Ukraine. Recent fake articles include the false claims that the FBI wiretapped former President Donald Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Florida, and that the CIA backed a Ukrainian plot to rig the election against Trump.  

“There is no question we are beginning to see a shift in focus toward the U.S. election,” Linvill said. 

Posing as local news, the sites host articles about crime, politics and sports, most of which seem to have been generated with artificial intelligence tools and are attributed to journalists who do not exist . Interspersed within the general news are articles that disparage the U.S., exalt Russia and spread disinformation about topics from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to Covid vaccines.

Researchers say sites attributed to Dougan are marred with telltale signs of his signature, including early website registration records, IP addresses, similar image headers and layouts, being built with WordPress software, seemingly AI-generated prompts mistakenly left in copy and error messages at the ends of articles.

The reach of the campaigns varies. Some of the sites remained active for just weeks with little to no pickup in the wider media. But some fake news stories have gained traction, including several recent posts using forged documents that falsely claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was improperly using foreign aid to enrich himself. Last month, a story on the fake news site The London Crier said Zelenskyy had spent 20 million pounds on a mansion previously owned by King Charles III. 

It followed a story posted to DC Weekly in November that falsely claimed Zelenskyy had used American aid money to buy two yachts. 

Both rumors relied, as the network often does, on videos posted to YouTube by newly created accounts. A site like DC Weekly will publish fake news stories using videos of seemingly AI-generated “leaks” or examples of whistleblowing, and Russian influencers and bot networks will then spread those articles, according to the Clemson researchers. Ultimately, the fake articles are reported as fact by pro-Kremlin media outlets and, in some of the most successful cases, by Western politicos and pundits. 

The rumor about Zelenskyy’s buying yachts was later promoted by Republican members of Congress , including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. 

The author of the new report, McKenzie Sadeghi, NewsGuard’s editor, pointed to the network’s sophisticated use of AI to produce content and make narratives seem credible. 

“In the wrong hands, this technology can be used to spread disinformation at scale,” Sadeghi said. “With this network, we’re seeing that play out exactly.”

What specific support Dougan receives from Russia is unclear. In May, the cybersecurity company Recorded Future reported a “realistic possibility” that the network receives strategic guidance, support or oversight from the Russian government. In March, The New York Times reported that the fake local news ring “appears to involve remnants” of the Internet Research Agency, the troll factory created by the late Putin associate Yevgeny Prigozhin to influence the 2016 presidential election. Previous reporting on Dougan and his more dubious claims — including that he was in possession of leaked documents from murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and secret tapes belonging to Jeffrey Epstein — suggests Dougan may be pursuing wealth, clout or operating from some other motive in addition to a state-sanctioned political agenda.

Dougan was an early creator of fake websites. After he resigned from his job as a sheriff’s deputy in Palm Beach County, Florida, and was fired months later from a subsequent one in Windham, Maine, over sexual harassment claims , he built a network of websites that focused on what he claimed was widespread corruption in Windham, naming local police and town officials in articles. He also reportedly launched a campaign doxxing thousands of federal agents, judges and law enforcement officers, posting their home addresses and salacious allegations online. By 2015 he was operating several websites with official-sounding names like DCWeekly.com and DCPost.org, which hosted made-up articles. In 2016, he fled to Russia following an FBI raid of his home to evade charges linked to his doxxing efforts. 

YouTube banned Dougan last year. On Telegram, he attributed the ban to videos he uploaded alleging a Russian mission to destroy U.S.-run bioweapons labs in Ukraine, a false narrative that would take hold as a justification for Russia’s invasion. Dougan’s ban came on the heels of a report from NewsGuard that highlighted the pro-Russian propaganda on his channel. 

According to co-CEO Steven Brill, NewsGuard’s earlier report and Dougan’s subsequent ban led to a harassment campaign against him. Brill says in a coming book that Dougan impersonated an FBI officer in phone calls to him, left threatening messages and posted YouTube videos showing aerial shots of Brill’s home.

Over WhatsApp, Dougan defended his videos about Brill, citing NewsGuard’s “partnership with the US government” to have his content removed. 

There is no evidence NewsGuard acted in concert with or on behalf of the U.S. government when it investigated Dougan. Asked for proof of such a partnership, Dougan sent a link to his own video, a 31-minute monologue laden with conspiracy theories. He’d reposted it to YouTube.

Brandy Zadrozny is a senior reporter for NBC News. She covers misinformation, extremism and the internet.