Levels Of Confidence In Police Research Articles

Visibly better? Testing the effect of ethnic appearance on citizen perceptions of the police

ABSTRACT Ethnic minority officers continue to be underrepresented across UK police forces. Further, some ethnic minority groups consistently report lower levels of confidence in police compared to their White British counterparts. Although there is consensus that a more ethnically representative police service is a good idea, there is limited evidence in the UK on how the public perceives officers of different ethnic appearance, and how this relates to trust, confidence and legitimacy. This paper presents findings from an online experiment (n = 260) exploring how ethnic appearance affects perceptions of police. Our findings offer rare empirical support for a more ethnically representative police force. First, across respondents, we found that Black officers were perceived significantly more favourably than White or Asian officers. Second, we found that Black respondents had more negative responses to White officers, yet there was little evidence that Black officers elicited more negative reactions from White or Asian respondents. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

An international study on public confidence in police

Levels of public confidence in police vary greatly internationally, yet little is known about the causes of this variation. I investigate public confidence in police and identify country-level factors that contribute to its variation cross-nationally. From Rawls’ conception of political legitimacy, I hypothesize that stable and high-level democracy increase confidence in the police, while government corruption lowers this confidence. I further hypothesize that these effects are particularly exaggerated among ethnic minority groups. Collectively, results suggest that reduction of government corruption is the most important thing any nation can do to garner public confidence in police.

Immigrants’ confidence in police: do country-level characteristics matter?

This study examines the effects of national-level factors on immigrant levels of confidence in police across different countries. Data are pulled from the World Values Survey, which is linked to country information regarding population composition, levels of discrimination, government efficiency, and homicide rates. Results from hierarchical logistic regression analyses reveal that individuals who reside in countries with higher political discrimination are more likely to hold police in lower regard, while confidence in police is higher in countries with higher immigrant concentration and more government efficiency. In addition, the results reveal that immigrants are more likely to hold police in lower regard than native-born citizens. Most importantly, the negative effect of immigrant status is amplified in countries where political discrimination occurs more frequently. The overarching suggestion is that these variations must be considered, as they have important implications for immigrant assimilation to the country of destination.