Maria Sviatschi (Princeton): Can Debiasing Law Enforcement Officers Improve Performance? Evidence from an Expressive Arts Intervention in India
Abstract: Biases among state agents can undermine the quality of public service delivery and restrict access to justice, particularly for marginalized groups. We study whether reshaping police officers’ attitudes toward gender-based violence (GBV) improves real-world policing performance. We partner with the Government of Bihar, India, to implement a clustered randomized controlled trial covering 419 police stations and approximately 2,500 senior officers serving 42 million citizens. The novel intervention builds on an expressive arts–based pedagogy that uses role play, perspective-taking, and experiential learning to address gender norms, empathy, and technical skills related to GBV. Six months after the intervention, treated officers exhibit significant improvements in attitudes toward GBV, reduced victim-blaming, higher empathy, and greater legal knowledge. These improvements translate into meaningful changes in workplace environment and job performance. Eight months after the intervention, junior female officers in treated stations report significantly lower levels of workplace anxiety and harassment. One year later, standardized victim audits reveal substantial improvements in officers’ responses to women seeking help, including lower rates of case dismissal and more appropriate guidance. Exploring the random allocation of officer transfers, we show that even when treated officers move, individual attitudes toward GBV improve in relation to their control peers. We also find evidence of positive spillovers among officers who are only exposed to the treatment via interaction with treated officers. Together, these findings demonstrate that implicit biases among frontline state agents are malleable and that immersive behavioral training can generate persistent improvements in institutional performance and workplace culture.
Economics
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