Social Interaction Training to Reduce Police Use of Force

Abstract

Controversial incidents involving uses of force by police in recent years have led to calls for improving officers’ de-escalation skills. A more fruitful approach to police training reform may be a broader focus on improving officers’ social interaction skills. By viewing all police-citizen encounters as social interactions that can either escalate toward or de-escalate away from the use of force, police training can develop what other fields call a “deliberate, repetitive practice” framework. This article describes the implementation of a randomized trial that brought such training to two U.S. police agencies and yielded encouraging results. We conclude that the conceptual framework was generally well received but that results depended heavily on the selection and performance of each agency’s own trainers.