Strengthening the Rule of Law Through Community Policing: Evidence From Liberia

How to improve security and strengthen the rule of law in fragile states? Community policing programs have long been at the forefront of policymakers' efforts to address this challenge. These programs tend to be more expansive than those found in developed countries, focusing not only on building trust through meetings and foot patrols, but also on eliciting 'coproduction' from communities to supplement scarce police capacity and provide alternatives to vigilantism. I partnered with the Liberian National Police (LNP) to experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in Monrovia, Liberia, one of sub-Saharan Africa's most crime-ridden cities. Drawing on a large-scale resident survey and administrative crime data, I find that the program improved relations between police and citizens, strengthened social norms against vigilantism, and mobilized communities to participate in the police's "Watch Forum" initiative by forming and sustaining local security groups designed to facilitate cooperation with police. These changes were accompanied by a roughly 40% reduction in the incidence of mob violence. Despite these improvements, the program did not reduce the overall incident of crime, improve perceptions of security, or increase crime reporting.