Mindfulness is Changing Law Enforcement

Mindfulness (paying attention to what is happening, here, now, with curiosity and openness towards thoughts and feelings) has helped me be aware of how my mind and emotions  function in many situations. 

Mindfulness has brought me face to face with my own unconscious racial bias. For instance, I noticed a barely perceptible tightening when I saw a black person in a mostly white neighborhood; Similarly, when I hired a black contractor to do work for me and he didn’t follow through, my immediate thoughts made it about race.

Being more aware didn’t stop my thoughts from happening, but awareness did give me more freedom to choose how I wished to react.

Research has shown that many of us have these types of unconscious bias. Scientists have studied this using a test called the Implicit Assumptions Test or IAT. They flash photos of people representing different social groups on a screen. They have shown that white participants and even many blacks, show bias by having quicker response times when pairing words representing “good” characteristics with white faces and words representing “bad” characteristics with black faces than vice versa.

These results are in a laboratory setting. Could mindfulness make a difference in the real world, for example with police officers who need to make split second decisions in often ambiguous situations? I was pleasantly surprised to find the degree to which police officers, corrections officers, lawyers, judges and others on the front lines in many locations are having positive results from mindfulness training.

The following is from an article titled:  How Mindfulness is Changing Law Enforcement by Jill Suttie:

Chief of police, Sylvia Moir, says, “The science is validating that mindfulness has the potential to increase fair and impartial policing, because we are open to recognizing our responses to a stimulus, to an event, to a person. I really think this is going to change the way we show up for our communities. “

Obviously it will be a long, slow process for mindfulness to have a major impact on the criminal justice system.  However, I find hope and inspiration from seeing the ways in which many, many people are using a mindfulness practice not just for personal growth or for adapting to an existing system, but for actually changing how we respond to others in significant ways. It is in that process that I find hope for real change in our larger society.

Further information on mindfulness in the criminal justice system