Building Public Trust Through Police-Community Meetings

Lessons from Colombia

Metaketa researchers: Eric Arias, Rebecca Hanson, Dorothy Kronick, Tara Slough

Geographical region: Latin America and the Caribbean

Project country: Colombia

Case study question: Can police-community meetings build trust?

Edited by: Jaclyn Leaver

The Metaketa Initiative is a collaborative research model with a mission to improve knowledge about critical governance issues through rigorous field experiments. In each Metaketa “round,” the initiative coordinates multiple studies on a specific topic or intervention in a variety of countries and contexts.

As part of our efforts to share the results and policy impacts from the Metaketa Initiative, we’ve put together a series of Stories of Change. These stories share case studies that highlight new approaches and interventions used by Metaketa researchers and implementing partners.

Here we share the story of an experiment in Colombia where researchers used town hall meetings to build trust between citizens and the police and to improve public safety. This study is part of the fourth Metaketa round, which focused on the effects of community policing programs on building citizen trust in police and reducing crime.