DOJ to Institute Mandatory Bias Training
6.28.2016
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Employees at the Department of Justice will undergo mandatory bias training to eliminate "impact biases" in their law enforcement judgment.
More than 33,000 federal agents and prosecutors are set to get the training, which will begin in 2017, though Department of Homeland Security employees are exempt. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is scheduled to announce the program in Phoenix on Tuesday, a DOJ official told Reuters.
“Implicit bias also presents unique challenges to effective law enforcement, because it can alter where investigators and prosecutors look for evidence and how they analyze it without their awareness or ability to compensate,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in a memo obtained by Reuters.
The decision to start training the DOJ employees follows that of local police departments that began to do so after racially-charged police actions.
The group in charge of the bias training is controversial.
The bias training was largely developed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think tank which recently came under fire from law enforcement groups for its recommendations on use-of-force situations, including suggestions such as imagining public perception.
“We’re not going to stand by and let police officers be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness,” Executive Director of the Fraternal Order of Police Jim Pasco told CBS in February.
Nevertheless, the DOJ will go forward with their training.
“The program has been so well-received by our state and local counterparts, we thought it was something we should be offering to our federal agents, frankly, to get our own house in order,” she told Reuters.
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