Police Accountability – Practices and Dilemmas of Independent Police Complaints Bodies and Police Control

Conference of the Research Project “Police Accountability: Towards International Standards” / ConTrust Praxisforum

In times of expanding police powers as well as increasing discussions about legitimacy and problems within the police, the question of police accountability and control becomes vital.

How is police accountability organized? How are police complaints bodies dealing with complaints? What are their objectives? What powers do they have and how independent are they? How well are they known to the public? How do they function in relation to other police accountability mechanisms? After three years of international, comparative research we present our findings on independent police complaint bodies in an international conference and discuss these key questions together with experts, practitioners and the public.

This three-year project compared independent police complaints bodies (IPCBs) across five countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK. Its findings are based on a comparative analysis drawing on over 200 interviews conducted with key stakeholders across the project countries, public surveys conducted in four countries and extensive inter-disciplinary research reflecting the broad expertise of the project members across law, criminology, political science, history and sociology.

The conference will be interactive with opportunities for discussion and will take place as ConTrust Praxisforum on the 19. & 20th of June 2024 in Frankfurt am Main.

We kindly ask you to register before ^31st May 2024 via email to
Police.Accountability@hwr-berlin.de

Organizer: ConTrust – Trust in Conflict. A cluster project of the State of Hesse and the research project Police Accountability. Towards International Standards
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Economic and Social Research Council, French National Research Agency, Centre national de la recherche scientifique and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada