Police accountability is a core component of public safety and attorneys general can play an important role in fostering accountability on behalf of communities across the nation. When police are not held accountable for misconduct in their communities, it erodes community trust and confidence as well as cooperation with core policing activities, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the police and the criminal legal system more broadly. The close and cooperative relationship between local prosecutors and the police may call into question the ability of some prosecutors to meaningfully investigate police misconduct in their jurisdictions. As a result, a number of states have empowered their attorneys general to provide police oversight as a means for strengthening community trust and thereby improving public safety.

Together with Arnold Ventures, the IIP has created the State Attorneys General Police Oversight and Accountability Network to bring together attorneys general, policy experts, academics, community leaders, and other key stakeholders for a series of strategic convenings to lay the groundwork for state attorneys general to take a leadership role in the police accountability space. The goal of this project is to create a formal network of state attorneys general that will help and support them in shaping this emerging field of police oversight.

The project will: (1) document the efforts of state attorneys general who engage in police oversight, including the various models of oversight and associated challenges and opportunities; (2) enable attorneys general engaged in police oversight to learn from and support each other in this accountability work; and (3) provide the public, advocates, agency leaders and elected officials that may be considering this approach to oversight with insights on potential challenges and solutions.