A new study is shining a light on the effects of implicit biased training for law enforcement. In 2018 and 2019, the New York City Police Department provided 36,000 personnel a one day class on implicit bias using the Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) curriculum. The training reportedly costs the department 5.5 million dollars.
At the time of the training, several groups praised the effort and NYPD cooperated with the International Association of Chiefs of Police/University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy (the IACP/UC Research Center) and the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc. in order to conduct evaluation research on the impacts of the training.
Using a survey on the day of the training, researchers determined that 70% of the attendees had a higher level of knowledge about implicit bias and procedural justice.
Those not familiar with an actual study would call that success but a recent peer reviewed study has shown no effects from the training.
A cluster randomized controlled trial was applied to 14,471 officers in the New York City Police Department that analyzed law enforcement activity following the training resulting in “None of the estimated training effects achieved statistical significance at the .05 level.”
