Improving police interventions, the objective of impact measurement in Argentina

The Centro de Entrenamiento y Doctina Policial (CEDOP) (Center for Police Training and Doctrine) is a division of the Federal Police of Argentina, created in 2013 to provide training and police doctrine systems to its members. The impact measurement of its program regarding the use of force and fire arms seeks to improve police interventions to achieve an operational effectiveness while respecting the norms regarding Human Rights. 

The program works in the areas of training, wellbeing, logistics, and control. The first course was on operational updates to improve the tools and knowledge of the police force with respect to citizen safety during their daily tasks. 

To evaluate the impact of the program, the perceptions of the group that had training and the group that didn´t but performed similar tasks were compared. To make the results credible, a survey system was designed with a lists and similar socio-demographic groups. This was the first evaluation of this kind to which the Argentinean Ministry of Security and Nation, created in 2010, subjected to.  

Among the results of the impact measurement, the following stand out: institutional learning was created regarding this type of experience, awareness was generated regarding the importance of conducting an evaluation, and it was verified that it is possible to submit to an evaluation without slowing down the operation.  

This evaluation, supported by CAF, carried out a short-term measurement to be able to get deeper knowledge regarding this type of policies in the medium and long-term. Monitoring the program was very useful to learn what was being done with it, if it was good or bad, what the structure of the program was, and what were the internal procedures of the CEDOP.