Calling for Service: Mobilization of the Police Across Sociocultural Environments

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Although researchers have investigated the nature and distribution of routine police activity over the past 30 years, surprisingly few analyses have explained the observed variation in these activities over time and even fewer have examined variations across jurisdictions. This research explores the nature and distribution of police activity through citizen calls for service in three developing nations of the Caribbean region. It is argued that the social and political context of the jurisdiction determines, at the margins, the nature of citizen calls for police service. That is, for non‐serious crime and other services, citizens’ calls for police services are predicated upon the nature of the relationship between the citizenry and the police. This study analyzes calls for service data from three Caribbean nations: Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica. The nature and distribution of the calls are analyzed in relationship to the constables’ perceptions of their legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry. The findings indicate that the nature of citizen calls for service are related to these perceptions of legitimacy. That is, the more the sensed legitimacy of the police, the greater the citizens’ tendency to initiate calls for services that do not involve serious criminal incidents. The policy implications of these findings for police work in developing nations are presented and discussed.