Fusion Centers, ILP, and Reducing Racial Profiling

Introduction: Christian Values and Criminal Justice Reform

A central tenet of Christian societies is the need to create healthy and safe local communities. Christians frequently emphasize freedom and justice within the Judeo-Christian perspective, which includes the creation and promotion of fair criminal justice policies. These policies must eliminate actions based on stereotypes and work to eradicate racial profiling as a method of apprehending potential criminals. With the support of religious entities and congregations, implementing community-oriented policing methods through collaboration with intelligence-gathering entities may lead to more effective and accessible community policing. Tools such as fusion centers and intelligence-led policing (ILP) may make this goal possible.

What Are Fusion Centers?

Fusion centers function as information-sharing hubs. They were created under the U.S. Department of Justice through two government agencies: the Office of Justice Programs and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Most fusion centers were established between 2003 and 2007 (Rukus, Warner, & Zhang, 2017). Their purpose is to promote information sharing at the federal level across various tiers of government, including state and local agencies. While statistics have not been updated since 2009, there are approximately 72 fusion centers operating in the United States. An additional purpose for fusion centers is their potential use alongside Emergency Operations Centers in the event of a disaster.

While the concept of a fusion center appears to be a powerful tool for law enforcement — particularly in promoting collaborative efforts through information sharing — what has already been executed has resulted in the production of useless, inappropriate, or irrelevant intelligence reports, with some fusion centers reporting no intelligence at all. Even more troubling, a government report found that some fusion centers violated privacy and/or civil liberties. If fusion centers are to help law enforcement better manage interactions with minority communities, they must be restructured in a way that genuinely improves police contact with those communities.

Intelligence-Led Policing and Its Limitations

Intelligence-led policing (ILP) is a policing framework focused on risk management and assessment. Intelligence officers in this model often serve not merely as operational support but as guides to operations themselves. First observed in the 1990s in both the United States and Great Britain, ILP encouraged officers to behave similarly to intelligence agents — gathering information to generate a greater number of arrests and combat repeat offenders. Much of the ILP practiced today has evolved to include a "revisionist" expansion that allows for the integration of neighborhood policing and community reassurance.

Police contact represents the entry point into the criminal justice system. As Spencer, Charbonneau, and Glaser (2016) observe, "biases (like any preconceptions) held by the police almost certainly cause racially discriminatory decisions about whom to investigate (stop, question, search) and how to interpret their behavior, and therefore partially account for disparities in criminal justice outcomes" (p. 51). This reality underscores the importance of designing ILP frameworks that actively counteract, rather than reinforce, implicit bias in policing decisions.

Conclusion: Toward a Fairer Justice System

Fusion centers and the use of ILP have been regarded as a waste of resources in the past. Some research suggests ILP is ineffective precisely where fair policing strategies are most needed — in cities. Fusion centers have similarly been criticized as inefficient. However, as budgets shrink, there is a growing need to perform government functions in an efficient and cost-effective manner. What was once thought wasteful could enable government agencies and organizations to communicate and collaborate more readily through information sharing, ultimately leading to policy changes and a potential decrease in racial profiling.

As communities — and especially Christian communities — strive for a fairer society, these emerging technological tools can help displace stereotype-based perceptions of minority groups and promote a clearer, less prejudiced vision of justice. Of course, fusion centers must be assessed periodically to guard against abuse and invasion of privacy. Everything that is new comes with inherent challenges. It is ultimately up to the United States and its people to decide whether such risks are worth taking in pursuit of a just and civil society.

References

Lambert, D. (2010). Intelligence-led policing in a fusion center. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. Retrieved from

Rukus, J., Warner, M. E., & Zhang, X. (2017). Community policing: Least effective where need is greatest. Crime & Delinquency, 1–24. doi:10.1177/0011128716686339

Schmalleger, F. (2017). Criminal justice today: An introductory text for the twenty-first century (14th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Career & Technology.

Spencer, K. B., Charbonneau, A. K., & Glaser, J. (2016). Implicit bias and policing. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(1), 50–63. doi:10.1111/spc3.12210