7 - Can Trust Be Built through Citizen Monitoring of Police Activity? Evidence from Santa Catarina, Brazil

Summary

This chapter studies the effect of Rede de Vizinhos (RdV or “Neighbor Network”) community policing program in Santa Catarina, Brazil, which aims to improve public safety and trust between citizens and police by facilitating real-time information about crime and public safety through dedicated WhatsApp instant messages groups with the participation of a police officer. We randomly allocated neighborhoods that would see the policy implemented into treatment and control groups, with the former being exposed to an information campaign through which we publicized induction meetings using Facebook. Despite reaching roughly 10 percent of Santa Catarina’s population, our study does not find a differential participation rate in the RdV campaign regions. Further, we don’t find evidence of increased perceptions over the police or improvements over criminal rates in treated neighborhoods. Our results suggest that despite their promise, (technology-enabled) community policing programs may fail to deliver substantial impacts given saturation dynamics and diminishing marginal returns – our baseline surveys indicated that 52 percent of respondents had heard already about the RdV program with 13.1 percent actively participating.