Citizen Cooperation with the Police: Evidence from Contemporary Guatemala

Abstract

Community policing, and citizen cooperation with law enforcement more broadly, can improve local security outcomes by providing decentralized mechanisms for police accountability to local citizens. We hypothesize that five factors—alignment of citizen/police interests, relative costs of cooperation, costs of crime, prevalence of others’ cooperation, and perceived police efficacy—comprise a decision framework that guides citizens’ choices regarding whether to share information with law enforcement. We find evidence for this framework using rich survey and survey experimental data from a large nation-wide survey of Guatemalans and municipal administrative data. Our results indicate that increasing police efficacy, witness protection, and neighborhood trust boost the odds of cooperation with police by up to 55%. At a time when conversations about the relationship between community and police are widespread, this research offers insights into conditions under which cooperation between community members and law enforcement is most likely to occur.