Connecticut is developing a community-driven curriculum for police officers in urban areas, as required by the state’s Police Accountability Act of 2020. The new training program will focus on three core issues: implicit bias, reconciliation for past harms to minority communities, and procedural justice.
Community Involvement
The curriculum is being developed in collaboration with the community, with representatives from police departments learning the curriculum and then bringing it back to their respective departments. The program will also include community advisory boards to review the development of the curriculum, plans for training, and feedback on how the training is conducted.
Ernest Stevens, managing director for the Council of State Governments Justice Center, emphasized the importance of community involvement in creating the curriculum. He said that the process would include three community advisory boards and that community members would be asked to give feedback on the training.
Procedural Justice
One of the key elements of the training program is procedural justice, which involves ensuring that police officers interact with the public in a fair and respectful manner. Stevens said that the goal of procedural justice is to make sure that individuals feel heard, trusted, and validated during interactions with police officers.
The training program will also focus on implicit bias, with the goal of creating policies that minimize bad interactions between police officers and the public. For example, a department could create a policy that requires a different officer to transport and book a suspect after an arrest, eliminating further contact with the initial officer.
Reconciliation
The community will play a key role in the reconciliation element of the curriculum, which involves looking at historical harms of policing and how to build back trust. Cassandra Ramdath, research director for the Justice Collaboratory, said that community members will be asked to dictate what reconciliation looks like and how it can be achieved.
Original reporting: The Connecticut Mirror — read the source article.
