Community Policing Cut Mob Violence 40% in Monrovia — But Crime Stayed the Same

How can fragile states improve security and the rule of law? This study evaluates an expansive community policing program in Monrovia, Liberia that sought to build trust and elicit community “coproduction” to supplement scarce police capacity and provide alternatives to vigilantism.

🔍 How the program was tested: An experimental evaluation was implemented in partnership with the Liberian National Police (LNP) in one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most crime-ridden cities. The intervention combined traditional trust-building activities (meetings, foot patrols) with efforts to mobilize communities to participate in the police’s "Watch Forum" initiative.

📊 What was measured and how:

• Large-scale resident survey
• Administrative crime data
• Outcomes tracked included police–citizen relations, social norms about vigilantism, community formation and participation in local security groups, incidence of mob violence, overall crime rates, perceptions of security, and crime reporting

🔑 Key findings:

• Improved relations between police and citizens.
• Strengthened social norms against vigilantism.
• Mobilized communities to form and sustain local security groups and participate in the LNP "Watch Forum" initiative to facilitate cooperation with police.
• These changes were accompanied by a roughly 40% reduction in the incidence of mob violence.
• The program did NOT reduce overall incidents of crime, did NOT improve residents' perceptions of security, and did NOT increase crime reporting.

📌 Why it matters: Community policing in fragile-city settings can reduce vigilantism and foster cooperative local security arrangements, thereby strengthening the rule of law in important ways. However, these gains do not automatically translate into lower overall crime or greater perceived safety, highlighting limits and trade-offs for policy design in fragile states.