Law Commons^™

Police Union Contracts, Stephen Rushin

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article empirically demonstrates that police departments' internal disciplinary procedures, often established through the collective bargaining process, can serve as barriers to officer accountability.

Policymakers have long relied on a handful of external legal mechanisms like the exclusionary rule, civil litigation, and criminal prosecution to incentivize reform in American police departments. In theory, these external legal mechanisms should increase the costs borne by police departments in cases of officer misconduct, forcing rational police supervisors to enact rigorous disciplinary procedures. But these external mechanisms have failed to bring about organizational change in local police departments. This Article argues that state labor …