Are the Police Primarily Responsible for Influencing Place-Level Perceptions of Procedural Justice and Effectiveness? A Longitudinal Study of Street Segments

Abstract

While there has been significant study of the relationship between police legitimacy and its key antecedents - procedural justice (PJ) and police effectiveness (PE) at the individual level, little attention has been paid to what impacts general evaluations of PJ and PE. Our paper focuses on these perceptions at places. Our analyzes utilize survey data collected on 447 street segments in Baltimore City, MD, in two waves. We first used EFA to determine the latent structure of PJ and PE measures. We then used mixed effects OLS regression modeling techniques to examine the antecedents of a “scorecard” of perceptions of the police. The results of the EFA show a single latent structure that we term the scorecard for PJ and PE. While we find that experiences with the police and street conditions that the police are presumed to impact influence the scorecard, street conditions that are less likely to be influenced by police (collective efficacy and concentrated disadvantage) also have strong influence. Both the research and policy-oriented literature often view the police as primarily responsible for their public image. Our data suggest that at the place level, such perceptions are also strongly impacted by factors primarily outside police influence.