Civilian Review and the Police: Unraveling the Factors That Determine Complainants and Police Satisfaction With the People's Law Enforcement Board (PLEB) of the Philippines

Abstract

One of the key features of the Philippine police reorganization in 1991 was the creation of a civilian review called the People's Law Enforcement Board. Using surveys, this study examines the factors that determine satisfaction with the board among complainants and board reviewed officers in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. The results suggest that procedural independence has greater significant influence on satisfaction than structural independence. Likewise, efficiency significantly influences satisfaction. Case outcome is significantly related to the satisfaction of complainants. However, case outcome has no significant influence to the satisfaction of the police with the board. A mixed type of civilian review and speedy resolution of cases are proposed.

KEYTERMS:

• Civilian review boards
• People's Law Enforcement Board
• police accountability
• Philippine National Police
• civilian complaints

Notes

1. The references to other review boards are historical in nature. Current perceptions and sentiments about the boards in these jurisdictions have somewhat changed. For example, police officers in England and U.S. cities now have more favorable attitudes toward civilian reviews. These experiences from these jurisdictions are cited to highlight the problems associated with civilian reviews in their initial stages.

2. The questionnaire had to be administered to the complainants either self-administered or structured interview so as not to eliminate those that could not self-administer the survey. Problem of reliability is not an issue as the questions were asked verbatim.

3. The response rate is low due to officers leaving the service either through resignation or retirement (n = 389), reassignment outside of the NCR (n = 189), or death (n = 18). Only three who were tracked refused to participate in the survey. This is not really problematic because most studies involving civilian review had very small samples (Perez, 1994). Furthermore, reviewed officers are not usually representative of the general population as only a handful of police officers generate the most number of complaints (Terrill & McCluskey, 2002).