Post-Experimental Follow-Ups—Fade-Out Versus Persistence Effects
The Rialto Police Body-Worn Camera Experiment Four Years On
Published in: Journal of Criminal Justice, Volume 53 (2017), pages 110-116. doi: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2017.09.008
Posted on RAND.org on November 27, 2018
Read More
Access further information on this document at Journal of Criminal JusticeThis article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
Purpose
Under certain conditions, experimental treatment effects result in behavioral modifications that persist beyond the study period, at times, even after the interventions are discontinued. On the other hand, there are interventions that generate brief, short-term effects that "fade out" once the manipulation is withdrawn or when the in-study follow-up period is completed. These scenarios are context specific.
Methods
This study reports the results from a three-year post-experimental follow-up from the world's first randomized controlled trial of police body-worn cameras.
Results
The results show that initial falls in rates of complaints against police and police use of force during arrest were sustained during the four years following the cameras being introduced.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that police officers do not become habituated to the effect of the body-worn cameras, and that persistence rather than fade-out effects may characterize this emerging technology.
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
Research conducted by
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
Our mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis is enabled through our core values of quality and objectivity and our unwavering commitment to the highest level of integrity and ethical behavior. To help ensure our research and analysis are rigorous, objective, and nonpartisan, we subject our research publications to a robust and exacting quality-assurance process; avoid both the appearance and reality of financial and other conflicts of interest through staff training, project screening, and a policy of mandatory disclosure; and pursue transparency in our research engagements through our commitment to the open publication of our research findings and recommendations, disclosure of the source of funding of published research, and policies to ensure intellectual independence. For more information, visit www.rand.org/about/principles.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.