Perceived Police Effectiveness Research Articles

Differential perceptions of fear of crime among college students: The race factor

ABSTRACTDespite the rising crime rates on U.S. university campuses, few empirical studies—either quantitative or qualitative—have examined the rate of fearfulness among college students. The present analysis supplements previous efforts by exploring racial effects on college students' feelings of fearfulness and determines the influence of individual characteristics on white and nonwhite students' fear of crime. Using cross-sectional data from a large public university in the United States, results show that nonwhite students have greater levels of fear of crime on campus than their white counterparts. Moreover, gender and perceived police effectiveness also influenced students' levels of fear of crime. The effects were true for both white and nonwhite students.

Is the Public Willing to Help the Nigerian Police During the Boko Haram Crisis? A Look at Moderating Factors

This paper sought the opinion of 200 Nigerians on their willingness to cooperate with the police during the Boko Haram crisis. Public perceptions of police effectiveness during the crisis, residence location, gender and religious affiliation were used as moderators. Data was analysed using an explanatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Results indicated a strong association between perceived effectiveness and willingness to report to the police with respondents who question the effectiveness of the police being less likely to be willing to report criminal activity about Boko Haram. Further to this, the impact of religion on willingness to report was at least partially mediated by perceived effectiveness of the police with the results showing that Christian respondents perceived the police as less effective. Females and those living in the north were significantly less willing to report criminal activity to the police. The findings are discussed in relation to the BH crises and directions for future research are given.

Procedural Justice, Obligation to Obey, and Cooperation with Police in a Sample of Ghanaian Immigrants

Theory and research highlight the importance of procedural justice for inculcating people’s obligation to obey and willingness to cooperate with legal authorities, yet questions remain about the universality of these relationships across cultures and contexts. We examine the influence of procedural justice and other factors on Ghanaian immigrants’ obligation to obey and willingness to cooperate with police. The findings suggest that when police are perceived to behave in a procedurally just manner, people feel an increased obligation to obey their directives and willingness to cooperate with them. Perceived police effectiveness does not influence Ghanaian immigrants’ obligation to obey police, but is the most dominant factor in shaping their willingness to cooperate with police. Respondents’ views of police in Ghana did not influence obligation or cooperation. The implications of the results for theory development, empirical research, and policies intended to improve police–immigrant relations are discussed.

Predicting perceived police effectiveness in public housing: police contact, police trust, and police responsiveness

ABSTRACTPublic housing authorities have implemented banishment policies giving police the authority to ban non-residents from public housing and arrest them for trespassing upon violating the ban. Scholars argue that banishment expands police powers because authorities need little reason to ban non-residents, are beyond judicial review, and can lead to racially disparate enforcement. However, it is unclear whether community policing may be able to mediate the negative effects of banishment, by building police trust, and still allow residents to perceive the police and banishment as effective. This study presents survey data from 221 public housing households in a Southeastern US city policed under banishment and community policing strategies. Regression analysis is used to test whether police contact, police trust, or police responsiveness can predict whether residents view the police as effective even in neighbourhoods where banishment is a commonly used policing tactic. Results indicate police trust and police responsiveness-under-policing or over-policing-to be the most significant predictors of perceived police effectiveness in public housing after controlling for police contact and demographic variables. Based on the findings, police officers in public housing should concentrate on gaining the trust of the community, which, in turn, can increase perceived effectiveness. However, banishment enforced in public housing can negatively affect perceived police effectiveness when residents perceive police to be over-policing or under-policing. Nonetheless, banishment can be a promising tool for public safety if used under the guidance of community policing.

A Socio Legal Research on Contribution of Pictures and Television Program to Juvenile Delinquency and Crimes in Jalgaon City

Public knowledge of crime and justice is largely derived from the media. This paper examines the influence of media consumption on fear of crime, punitive attitudes and perceived police effectiveness. This research contributes to the literature by expanding knowledge on the relationship between fear of crime and media consumption. This study also contributes to limited research on the media's influence on punitive attitudes, while providing a much-needed analysis of the relationship between media consumption and satisfaction with the police. Employing OLS regression, the results indicate that respondents who are regular viewers of crime drama are more likely to fear crime. However, the relationship is weak. Furthermore, the results indicate that gender, education, income, age, perceived neighborhood problems and police effectiveness are statistically related to fear of crime. In addition, fear of crime, income, marital status, race, and education are statistically related to punitive attitudes. Finally, age, fear of crime, race, and perceived neighborhood problems are statistically related to perceived police effectiveness.

Variable links within perceived police legitimacy?: Fairness and effectiveness across races and places

This work examines connections between two threads of community residents’ perceptions of local police legitimacy, effectiveness and procedural fairness, and how those links depend on race, place, and race/place combinations. Previous works have connected these two threads, but have failed (a) to explore the variability of that connection by race, place, and race/place combinations across communities spanning the urban to suburban to rural continuum or (b) to model mutual influence. An extension of the group position thesis and work on minority views of police practices suggest how these variations might be patterned. Data were derived from a 2003 probability-based sampling survey of household respondents across Pennsylvania (n=1289). Generalized confirmatory factor analysis models built procedural fairness and effectiveness indices for four groups: whites in urban core counties, non-whites in urban core counties, whites in non-urban core counties, and non-whites in non-urban core counties. Non-recursive structural equation models revealed variable impacts of perceived police effectiveness on perceived police fairness and, to a lesser extent, of fairness on effectiveness. Implications for a more structurally and contextually aware understanding of links in police legitimacy models are developed.

Support for community policing in India and the US: an exploratory study among college students

Purpose – While there is a growing body of studies on the people's views of community policing, there have been a very few cross-national studies. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast students’ views on community policing from India and the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The data were from a survey from a total of 434 Indian and 484 US college students. Findings – Punitive orientation had a significant effect on attitudes toward community policing, but was related to an increase in the support in India and reduction of support in the USA. Among the Indian respondents, concern for crime and support for aggressive policing had positive associations with support for community policing, and police involvement in the community had a negative association. Among the US respondents, age, educational level, and perceptions of police effectiveness had positive associations with support for community policing, and holding a punitive orientation had a negative association. Originality/value – This study represents the attempt to examine Indian perceptions of community policing empirically. Uncovering factors that affect public support for community policing can provide useful references for police administrators to develop policies and practices that encourage more active community involvement in crime control.

More Than a Feeling

Empathy is related, directly or indirectly, to important elements in criminology such as the enactment of harsh penalties for repeat offenders, antisocial behavior, feelings of legitimacy toward the law, and attitudes toward the death penalty. Although empathy is beginning to find its way into criminological discourse, it is still not well understood nor often incorporated into quantitative research. This is likely due to issues regarding the conceptualization and measurement of empathy as well as the lack of measures of empathy incorporated into contemporary data sets. This study discusses the importance of empathy for criminology and uses a set of research examples to exemplify the relationships between empathy and outcomes important to criminology. Empathy emerges as an important predictor of criminal behavior, support for harsh laws, and perceptions of police effectiveness. Future research should incorporate measures of empathy when seeking to understand individual feelings and behaviors as they relate to important facets of criminology and criminal justice.

An environment-adjusted evaluation of citizen satisfaction with local police effectiveness: Evidence from a conditional Data Envelopment Analysis approach

Hard data alone are not sufficient to evaluate local police effectiveness in the new age of community policing. Citizens can provide useful feedback regarding strengths and weaknesses of police operations. However, citizen satisfaction indicators typically fail to accurately convey the multidimensional nature of local policing and account for characteristics that are non-controllable for the local police departments. In this paper, we construct a measure of perceived effectiveness of community oriented police forces that accounts for both multidimensional aspects of local policing and exogenous influences. In specific, this paper suggests the use of a multivariate conditional, robust order-m version of a non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis approach with no inputs. We show the potentiality of the method by constructing and analyzing perceived effectiveness indicators of local police forces in Belgium. The findings suggest that perceived police effectiveness is significantly conditioned by the demographic and socioeconomic environment.

PUBLIC COOPERATION WITH THE POLICE IN GHANA: DOES PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS MATTER?*

Recent criminological emphasis on the salience of normative concerns, such as procedural fairness and legitimacy, in understanding public law‐abiding behavior has been based on evidence from Anglo‐American studies. This article examines these issues in the African context based on general survey data from Accra, Ghana. The results show a lack of empirical validity, in the Ghanaian context, of the Sunshine–Tyler legitimacy scale. The results also show that public cooperation with the police in Ghana is shaped by utilitarian factors such as perceptions of current police effectiveness infighting crime. It is argued that the importance of perceived police effectiveness to public cooperation is a result of police legitimation deficits and the public's alienation from the Ghana police, which in turn are traced to the colonial history of the police and current poor police performance.

Self-Help, Policing, and Procedural Justice: Ghanaian Vigilantism and the Rule of Law

Public recourse to vigilante self-help has often been attributed to a lack of effective state intervention; less attention has been given to the character of this intervention. Using the Tylerian procedural justice perspective, I argue in this article that perceived procedural injustice contributes to increased public support for violent self-help mechanisms such as vigilante violence. The current study tests this theoretical argument using survey data of 374 residents of Accra, Ghana. The results show that age, education, and police trustworthiness were the most significant predictors of support for vigilante self-help. The impacts of procedural fairness were found to be embraced within police trustworthiness, but perceptions of police effectiveness and experience of police corruption were not statistically significant predictors of vigilante support.

Unpacking Public Attitudes to the Police: Contrasting Perceptions of Misconduct with Traditional Measures of Satisfaction

Much research on public attitudes to the police in the United States has focused on perceptions of police effectiveness and responsiveness rather than police misconduct. This research has also tended to rely primarily on experiences of direct personal contacts with police and, more recently, neighbourhood to explain demographic differences in public opinion. This article uses data from a five-neighbourhood community survey to extend this focus. It tests four hypotheses: (1) public attitudes about police misconduct are distinct from their attitudes about police effectiveness and responsiveness; (2) determinants of attitudes about police misconduct are different from those relating to police effectiveness and responsiveness; (3) negative experiences of police among friends, family and associates impact on personal attitudes to the police; (4) attitudes toward the police are affected by the character of news coverage to which members of the public are exposed. Using principal components analysis and ANCOVA models, the research finds support for all four hypotheses. The research underscores how perceptions of police misconduct are more sensitive to media influences, race and neighbourhood factors and police-initiated contacts, than traditional measures of public confidence.

Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude: An Examination of Police Officer Perceptions of Police Effectiveness among Select Police Agencies in Canada, Venezuela, and the USA

The purpose of this study is to analyze police officer perceptions of police effectiveness across three different police agencies in three different countries. The theory driving this research holds that institutions in democratic societies, such as the police, have an inherent purpose in society and that the perceptions of qualities necessary to be effective in their societal role should not change across international borders. Offering support for the theory, personal interviews with police officers from three police agencies in Canada, Venezuela, and the USA found that commonalities do exist among police officer perceptions of police effectiveness.

Structural Determinants of Police Effectiveness in Market Democracies

This study examined structural correlates of police effectiveness in 28 market democracies. It found that perceptions of police effectiveness rose in countries with low homicide rates, independent judiciaries, and high income. Greater political freedoms and a lower robbery rate were associated with low police effectiveness. The size of police forces and population and unemployment rates were largely irrelevant. Findings demonstrated the basic dependence of quality policing on good judicial governance and a healthy economy. Making the police more effective requires reform of more than the police. In postmodern democracies, effective policing will require improved media portrayal of crime and increased democratization of police tactics and strategies.

A cross‐national comparison of citizen perceptions of the police in New York City and St Petersburg, Russia

Long a tradition in the USA, surveys of citizen perceptions of the police are beginning to gain prominence in emerging democracies. Recently, citizen surveys using common items were conducted in New York and St Petersburg, Russia. This paper reports on a cross‐national analysis of data on citizen perceptions of the police using data from these two surveys. The analyses include comparisons of voluntary and involuntary contacts with the police, perceptions of police effectiveness, and perceptions of police misconduct. Results suggest that residents of St Petersburg are more likely to be stopped by the police, while residents of New York are more likely to contact the police for assistance with crime and other neighborhood problems. Police in New York were generally seen as more effective than their counterparts in St Petersburg. In both cities, roughly half of those surveyed believed that the police engaged in misconduct.

Media Influence on Citizen Attitudes Toward Police Effectiveness

Employing the 1995 National Opinion Survey of Crime and Justice (NOSCJ), this study examines the effect that media consumption has on attitudes toward police effectiveness. Media consumption consists of hours of television viewing per week, regular viewing of crime drama and primary source of crime news. Employing OLS regression, the results indicate that none of the media variables are significantly related to attitudes toward police effectiveness. Moreover, the results indicate that age, race, income, fear of crime and perceived problems in the neighborhood are significantly related to perceived police effectiveness. In addition, the sample was divided into respondents with no police contact and those with police contact. For respondents with no police contact, the results indicate that none of the media variables are significantly related to police effectiveness. However, age, education, perceived problems in neighborhood, and fear of crime is significantly related to perceived police effectiveness. For respondents with police contact, the results reveal that hours of television viewing are positively related to police effectiveness. Respondents who watch increased levels of television are more likely to rate the police as ineffective. In addition, the results demonstrate that income, problems in neighborhood, and satisfaction with police contact are significantly related to perceived police effectiveness.