Debiasing Law Enforcement Officers: Evidence from an Expressive Arts Intervention in India

Frontline state agents exercise substantial discretion over citizens’ access to public services, yet little is known about whether the attitudes and beliefs shaping this discretion can be changed among incumbent bureaucrats. Partnering with the Bihar Police - one of India’s largest states that operates under comparatively severe policing capacity constraints, we conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial across 417 police stations and roughly 2,500 active duty senior field police officers to evaluate a three-day expressive arts intervention, grounded in the Theatre of the Oppressed, designed to change police responses to gender-based violence (GBV). Approximately 7 months after baseline, treated officers exhibit more favorable attitudes toward GBV, greater empathy, and stronger legal knowledge. These changes translate into observed policing behavior: in standardized victim audits conducted one year later, officers in treated stations are 15 percentage points less likely to blame victims, dismiss fewer complaints, and provide more referrals, while administrative records show a 41 percent reduction in registration delays and, over a longer horizon, increased GBV reporting by citizens. Exploiting variation generated by officer transfers, we find suggestive evidence that these effects persist when treated officers relocate and diffuse to untreated officers working alongside treated colleagues. The effects also extend to the workplace: junior female officers working with treated senior officers report lower harassment and anxiety. These findings show that the attitudes shaping bureaucratic discretion are malleable and that changing how incumbent state agents exercise authority can improve both citizen-facing service delivery and the broader workplace environment.