 Revenge Effects and Electronic Control Weapons: A Cautionary Tale about the Unintended Consequences of Technology in the American Justice SystemPaige E. Vaughn, Claire Greene and David Klinger Journal of Criminal Justice, 2024, vol. 90, issue C Abstract: Nonlethal weapons, such as electronic control devices (ECWs), have become increasingly commonplace in American law enforcement as our society seeks to reduce citizen injuries and deaths at the hands of the police. There is reason to suspect, however, that police possession of nonlethal weapons such as ECWs can sometimes increase the likelihood that a citizen will suffer serious injury or death during an interaction with the police. This paper lays out the theoretical basis for this suspicion and presents empirical evidence that the presence of ECWs has led police officers to shoot citizens in numerous cases where they otherwise would not have discharged their firearms. Police leaders—and policy makers throughout the criminal justice system—should carefully consider the potential downside(s) of given technologies before adopting them and seek means to ameliorate negative consequences if they opt to use them. Keywords: Policing; Technology; ECWs; TASERs; Unintended consequences; Revenge effects; Normal accidents (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:90:y:2024:i:c:s0047235223001150 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2023.102144 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Criminal Justice is currently edited by Matthew DeLisi More articles in Journal of Criminal Justice from Elsevier |
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