Abstract
Policing in the United States is irrefutably a component of systemic racism. The history of police brutality against the Black community can be found in our amendments, laws, and cultural practices—it is an infrastructure of oppression. Though police brutality is not a new development, it has reached a fever pitch with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Recent calls to defund the police put law enforcement agencies squarely, and rightly, in the spotlight of social justice movements and reform. Current issues operating within law enforcement agencies ensure the perpetuation of a system that reinforces the status quo and gives nothing back to the communities that have been victims of brutality. A philosophical restructuring of how law enforcement agencies interact with the communities they serve is paramount. The purpose of this article is to propose a behavior-scientific model aimed at both the individual and organizational levels of law enforcement agencies using elements of acceptance and commitment training and Elinor Ostrom’s core design principles, called Prosocial. The Prosocial model promotes the clarification of values within organizations and the communities they serve and reinforces values-consistent action. The model therefore has the potential to be a useful tool to combat systemic racism and police brutality within law enforcement agencies. The proposed model will be discussed in the context of who created it (White academicians), who will be implementing it (law enforcement), and ultimately who should benefit from it above and beyond the cessation of police brutality and without psychological or financial cost (Black communities).
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This manuscript is being published on an expedited basis, as part of a series of emergency publications designed to help practitioners of applied behavior analysis take immediate action to address police brutality and systemic racism. The journal would like to especially thank Janani Vaidya and Alison Szarko for their insightful and expeditious reviews of this manuscript. The views and strategies suggested by the articles in this series do not represent the positions of the Association for Behavior Analysis International or Springer Nature.
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Ghezzi, E.L., Funk, J.A. & Houmanfar, R.A. Restructuring Law Enforcement Agencies to Support Prosocial Values: A Behavior-Scientific Model for Addressing Police Brutality. Behav Analysis Practice 15, 1184–1192 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-020-00530-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-020-00530-y