Can Community Policing Increase Dispute Resolution and Public Trust?

Lessons from Pakistan

Metaketa researchers: Ali Cheema, Zulfiqar Hameed, Ali Hasanain, Jacob N. Shapiro

Geographical region: Asia

Project country: Pakistan

Case study question: Can police-community meetings improve public trust in the police?

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 Pakistan where researchers tested the efficacy of two variants of community problem-oriented policing, a citizen-centric problem-oriented (CPOP) model and a gender inclusive variant of CPOP (CPOP-G). 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.