Civil rights suits against the police are an essential tool for enforcing the Constitution. But cops rarely pay and settlements don’t lead to change.

Last year’s protests in response to the shooting by police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has brought the issue of police accountability to the national stage. Lynda G. Dodd writes that while civil constitutional lawsuits have a much greater scope for holding police officers accountable compared to the Department of Justice, such suits are the ‘worst of both worlds’; they are rarely successful, and even when they are, police officers are shielded from paying fees or damages by their employers. She argues that reforms targeting data collection around police misconduct are likely to do the most to strengthen civil litigation as a deterrent.