BRATTLEBORO — Years ago my wife and I came to an unscientific conclusion: that, past the age of 27, one's basic personality rarely changes. And later, more specifically, we included attitudes: about race, gender, color, nationality, or religion.
We still think that is true: who we are as a person, including our attitudes about different others, is quite fixed before we're 30.
So, every time we read about “sensitivity” or “implicit bias” training (or have undergone such training ourselves), we wonder whether it accomplishes much. Or whether in fact being told how we ought to think and behave may harden prejudices (especially with overmuch indoctrination).
For a number of years we've wondered especially about efforts to retrain police to deal appropriately with people they're policing. And our sense is that that training is of marginal use - beyond enabling management to say they're trying.
(According to a 2020 NPR report on a major independent study of the New York City Police Department, “It's fair to say that we could not detect effects of the training on officers' enforcement behaviors,” said Robert Worden, lead author of the study by the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety.)
What would be of use is thoughtful screening of applicants for police work, including two-stage screening for excess aggressiveness.
First, careful scrutiny of the candidate's background, and then close observation in the police academy (which could include assessment by candidates' peers, proven useful in other settings).
Some of that likely is done already. But I expect it could be done better, and be more effective, than sensitivity training of police once on the force.