​Transparency of the Policing of Protests

Transparency of the Policing of Protests

Our work with Open Society Justice Initiative was the first of many sectoral audits now in progress. Applying 14 queries to better understand the information on the policing of protests, the study adopted a ‘citizen search’ approach in which information was retrieved through both online searches of public websites and FOI requests. A total of five countries  – Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom –  were evaluated for the completeness of information relative to normatively derived benchmarks developed consensually by policing experts. The evaluation was characterized by enormous variation in performance, with South Africa and the UK scoring at 78.5% and 54% completeness, respectively, while Brazil, India, and Mexico all scored below 25%. Read more in the report below.

 

Download the report:

 Police Transparency: Evaluating Access to Information in Relation to the Policing of Public Gatherings in Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa and the United Kingdom 

Download the answers to FOI requests here:

 Brazil(90 MB)    India (0.02 MB)    South Africa (58 MB)    Mexico (12 MB)    United Kingdom (26 MB)