Modelling public confidence of the police: how perceptions of the police differ between neighborhoods in a city

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a survey evaluating the views of 1322 residents of York, UK around their perceptions and attitudes towards crime, their local area, and the police with the aim of understanding the main factors affecting public confidence within the city. The study uses Structural Equation Modelling to develop several models which are evaluated to examine whether differences in public confidence in the police exist across disparate local communities with varying degrees of neighbourhood perceptions. The results indicate that even in a relatively small city such as York, the factors which most affect an individual’s views of the police can vary wildly depending on an individual’s perceptions regarding their local area. The results suggest that policing strategies aimed at improving public confidence must be altered depending on the views residents hold regarding their local communities.     

The effect of community policing on fear and crime reduction,police legitimacy and job satisfaction: an empirical review of the evidence

Since the 1970s, community policing strategies or the language thereof have been purportedly initiated by a number of police departments nationwide to address notable issues such as crime, neighborhood disorder, and fear of crime. This policing philosophy has received considerable attention and support among scholars, police administrators, and criminal justice practitioners. This article synthesizes the available empirical evidence on the effectiveness of community policing initiatives using a variety of outcome measures. An overview of community policing is first provided with particular attention paid to its essence and objectives. Prior studies that have analyzed community policing effectiveness are then reviewed and assessed in terms of their methodological rigor and scientific merit. A discussion and future research considerations are presented to conclude.     

The relationship between disorder,perceived risk,and collective efficacy: a look into the indirect pathways of the broken windows thesis

The broken windows thesis suggests that disorder is a key part of a cycle of community decline that leaves neighborhoods vulnerable to crime. Some recent research has challenged this thesis by finding limited support for a direct relationship between disorder and crime. However, others argued that such studies ignore the indirect pathways posited in the thesis. The current study sheds light on this debate by examining the relationships between disorder, fear of crime, and collective efficacy and finds support for the relationships suggested by the broken windows model. However, the findings also suggest that the model is overly simplistic and needs to consider other mediating factors in addition to fear. Additionally, the findings show that perceptions of disorder may have different impacts for residents of an area vs. people who work at a business in the area. Implications for theory and policy are discussed.     

Confidence in the police among Korean people: An expressive model versus an instrumental model

The legitimacy of police authority has often been questioned due to a relatively low level of public confidence in the police in South Korea. Instrumental and expressive perspectives provide competing explanations of the determinants of public confidence in the police. Empirical studies comparing these competing perspectives are thus far limited to British and US studies. To fill this void, this study used a structural equation modeling approach to examine expressive and instrumental models of confidence in the police among South Koreans. Analyses of data from the Korean National Crime Victimization Survey revealed that both models were empirically supported. However, the expressive perspective (i.e., perceptions of local disorder, informal social control, and social cohesion) was more important than the instrumental perspective (i.e., worries about crime) in explaining confidence in the police among Koreans. The implications for research and policy are discussed based on the findings.     

Predicting perceptions of crime seriousness among Native American Indians: a research note

Strongly held cultural values may lead to development of pro-social behaviors and subsequently values against committing crime among people belonging to targeted racial or ethnic groups. In this study, the author examines measures of Native American Indian cultural values and measures of collective efficacy to determine which set of values best predict perceptions of crime seriousness from within a population of Native American Indians. The author uses data collected from 312 Indians and 355 non-Indians during the Southern Ute Indian Community Safety Survey to determine which set of values are more closely aligned with perceptions of crime seriousness. This study found that those who held stronger Native American Indian cultural values also had stronger perceptions of crime seriousness. In the past, little scientific work has been done to associate specific cultural values to those held by cultural groups other than Euro-Americans. Findings from this work suggest that strengthening cultural values specific to a targeted group may be a promising method in the effort to reduce victimization among minority group members if said members view crime as serious and report it as such.     

Unreported crimes,public dissatisfaction of police,and observed police misconduct in the Volgograd region,Russia: A research note

The paper examines the issue of widespread underreporting of crimes in the Volgograd region of Russia. The factors of public satisfaction with police, prior observed police misconduct, type of crime, and victim’s demographics are used to explain a victim’s decision to report crimes to the police. The research is based on a representative sample of Russian citizens conducted over a 9 year period in the Volgograd region (1998–2007) with a sample size of 1332 cases. The study concludes that prior observed police misconduct, especially the falsification of documents, is the strongest predictor of victims’ decisions to report crimes. The research holds critical implications for the ongoing reform of Russian police.     

Identifying changes in spatial patterns from police interventions: the importance of multiple methods of analysis

The policing initiative of foot patrol was implemented to reduce crime and disorder as well as benefit the relationship between the community and the police in the community of Lower Lonsdale, North Vancouver, British Columbia. In this paper, police incident data are analyzed to evaluate the impact of police foot patrol on the hot spots of crime in this community. Specifically, two spatial analysis techniques (kernel density estimation and local Moran’s I) are used to show how the nuances of changes in spatial crime patterns can emerge when multiple methods of analysis are used.     

Factors affecting likelihood of hiring private investigators (PI): Citizens' traits and attitudes toward police and PI

The aim of this study is to identify factors affecting citizens' likelihood of hiring private investigators (PI) for resolving their criminal and/or civil matters. Limited research has been conducted to investigate factors relevant to private investigators, but none of prior studies have studied citizens' characteristics and attitudes toward police and PI in this regard. To fill the void of the literature, this study utilized data collected from 225 Korean citizens. Factors examined include citizens' demographics, desire for personalized justice, attitudes toward PI's investigation, fear of crime, and attitudes toward public police. Findings indicate that citizens' desire for personalized justice was the most significant factor affecting likelihood of hiring PI for different types of cases. Results of the finding also showed that citizen's satisfaction with police work was negatively related with likelihood of hiring PIs for their criminal and/or civil cases. Based on results, policy implications for law enforcement were discussed.     

Public assistance of police during criminal investigations: Russian experience

This study examines the high levels of public unwillingness to assist police in criminal investigations in Russia. Variables of public trust of police, fear of crime, victimization, and prior contact with police are used to explain this phenomenon. Also included in the study are variables of police fear and avoidance of police. The findings suggest that higher levels of distrust in, as well as fear and avoidance of police are strong predictors of citizens’ unwillingness to assist police in Russia. The paper discusses potential implications of these findings for the 2011 police reform in Russia.     

Public preferences regarding police facebook posts: a macro-level analysis

ABSTRACT

Police agencies have adopted social media quite widely, but researchers have paid relatively little attention to the phenomenon. To date few studies have explored public reaction to police use of social media. The current study uses a purposive sample with 7,116 police Facebook posts collected from 14 different police agencies during a one-year period to answer two principal research questions: (1) with respect to the number of likes, number of shares, or number of comments regarding different themes present in police Facebook posts, are there differences among police agencies corresponding to differences in the thematic content in their postings? and (2) What factors are related to the public reaction (i.e., likes, shares, comments) to a police Facebook post? The findings from ANOVA and negative binomial regression models clearly indicate that citizens do have definite preferences on police Facebook posts – they are more likely to like and make comments on posts of police personnel and police-public relations, but less likely to share posts of Social Networking Sites. Also, they are more prone to like posts with narratives and pictures, but less likely to favor posts containing hyperlinks. Policy implications and practice guidelines, study limitations, and future research are also discussed.     

When police pull back: Neighborhood-level effects of de-policing on violent and property crime,a research note

Many U.S. cities witnessed both de-policing and increased crime in 2020, yet whether the former contributed to the latter remains unclear. Indeed, much of what is known about the effects of proactive policing on crime comes from studies that evaluated highly focused interventions atypical of day-to-day policing, used cities as the unit of analysis, or could not rule out endogeneity. This study addresses each of these issues, thereby advancing the evidence base concerning the effects of policing on crime. Leveraging two exogenous shocks presented by the onset of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, we evaluated the effects of sudden and sustained reductions in high-discretion policing on crime at the neighborhood level in Denver, Colorado. Multilevel models accounting for trends in prior police activity, neighborhood structure, seasonality, and population mobility revealed mixed results. On the one hand, large-scale reductions in stops and drug-related arrests were associated with significant increases in violent and property crimes, respectively. On the other hand, fewer disorder arrests did not affect crime. These results were not universal across neighborhoods. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of debates concerning the appropriate role of policing in the 21st century.     

Educational tracking and juvenile confidence in the police in China

Juvenile confidence in the police (JCP) has become an important research topic in policing. In spite of an increasing amount of research literature on JCP, the influence of educational tracking especially vocational tracking on juveniles’ confidence in the police has received limited scholarly attention. Extant literature suggests a noticeable difference in family backgrounds, attitudinal perceptions, and problematic behaviours between vocational school students and regular high school students. Using the survey data of 3628 students collected from these 2 distinctive segments of educational tracking in a southwestern Chinese city, this study examines if and how youths in vocational schools perceive the local police differently from their regular high school counterparts. The findings indicate that vocational school students had more confidence in the police than their regular high school peers. In addition, school contexts played a significant role in shaping their respective attitudes toward the police. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Police Officers in Schools: Effects on School Crime and the Processing of Offending Behaviors

The use of police in schools has increased dramatically in the past 12 years, largely due to increases in US Department of Justice funding. This study used data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety to assess the extent to which the addition of police in schools is associated with changes in levels of school crime and schools responses to crime. We found that as schools increase their use of police, they record more crimes involving weapon and drugs and report a higher percentage of their non-serious violent crimes to law enforcement. The possibility that placement of police officers in schools increases referrals to law enforcement for crimes of a less serious nature and increases recording of weapon and drug offenses requires that more rigorous research be carried out to assess more carefully the school climate and school safety outcomes related to this popular and costly practice.     

Community hierarchy of needs and policing models: toward a new theory of police organizational behavior

This study explains the influences of environmental variables on the emergence of varying policing models. It empirically tests a new perspective on the influences of community variations to police organizational behaviours and practices among local police departments in the U.S. Using the U.S. Census, the Uniform Crime Reports and the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics data, the study tests a perspective suggesting that community hierarchy of needs influences the degree level of the implementation of different models of policing, particularly community policing. The study presents constructs to operationalize hierarchy of needs. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relationships of hierarchy of needs, organizational factors, and other control variables to police departments’ pursuit of different policing models. Findings suggest that community hierarchy of needs and organizational factors significantly constrain the departments’ implementation of policing models. Lower hierarchy of needs tends to be associated with pursuit of traditional policing while a community with higher level needs tend to pursue community policing. Similarly, organizational complexities influence the implementation of different policing models.     

论美国社区警务的理论与实践

美国的社区警务理论研究成熟、实践经验丰富,是包括中国在内许多国家学习的对象。对美国社区警务产生的背景、主要理论依据、实践内容及评估评价做了细致而深入的分析。以期对我国社区警务建设提供一些新的认识与视角。     

Assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of a police service: the analytics of operational reviews

Concerns over rising costs have forced police services to balance increasing fiscal and operational pressures. Discussions of the resources and requirements of police, however, are generally only informed by political expediency and traditional practice. Operational reviews (ORs) can be used to document the demands on police, their capacity to respond, and ways in which they can become more efficient and effective. Drawing on an OR of a major urban Canadian police service, this article provides a broad outline of the components of an OR and the analytics that can be used to answer these key questions.