Affect and trust as predictors of public support for armed police: evidence from London

Abstract

Affect and trust as predictors of public support for armed police: Evidence from London Police in England, Scotland and Wales operate largely unarmed, and have done since the formation of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829. However, recent terror attacks and concern over serious violent crime have prompted increased funding for armed officers and even calls for routine arming of police. In this paper we present results from the first in-depth study of public attitudes toward the arming of more police. Starting from the assumption that most people have little concrete knowledge of the potential benefits and risks of doing so, we show that trust, and particularly affective responses to the idea of armed police, are central in shaping support for the routine arming of more officers. A range of other sociological and psychological variables are also important, but only in as much as they are correlated with trust and, again, particularly affect. Our findings have implications not only for this specific policy development, but also wider consideration of lay reactions to changes in police policy and technology.

Are the Effects of Legitimacy and Its Components Invariant? Operationalization and the Generality of Sunshine and Tyler’s Empowerment Hypothesis

“…Among Israelis, Metcalfe and Hodge (2018) found trust in police and perceived obligation to obey independently increased support for allowing the police to fight terrorism. Yesberg and Bradford (2018) found that London residents who more strongly trusted the police were more supportive of arming the police. Together, these studies provide general support for the empowerment hypothesis.…”

“…As shown in Table 1, variation in the operationalization of legitimacy exists in the empowerment literature. Paralleling the broader legitimacy literature, this research is split between the use of single scales (e.g., trust in police, Yesberg and Bradford 2018; obligation to obey, Pryce 2019) or composite measures (e.g., Moule, Burruss, Parry, et al 2019). To our knowledge, no research has examined whether the legitimacy–empowerment relationship is sensitive to these various operationalization strategies.…”

Live Facial Recognition: Trust and Legitimacy as Predictors of Public Support for Police Use of New Technology

“…Trust comprises a second and closely related heuristic, in that affective responses to a particular issue are formed in the context of trust, or distrust, in the actors concerned (c.f. Yesberg and Bradford 2018). It is well established that trust informs people's willingness to accept police presence, action and authority to dictate appropriate behaviour (Jackson and Bradford 2010;Sunshine and Tyler 2003;Tyler 2013;Tyler and Huo 2002).…”

Attitude of Young People to the Criminality Problem in Ukrainian Postmodern Society

“…Effective crime counteraction in a society is impossible without taking into account the population's attitude to this problem, its assessment of the police's activities aimed at counteracting such phenomenon (Birzu, 2017;Hoggett et al, 2019;Valieiev, Polyvaniuk et al, 2019;Săraru, 2016). Such knowledge allows drafting adequate policy to counteract crime in the country, improving the forms and methods of the police bodies' work, and conducting the task-oriented cultural and education activities among citizens (Damme, 2017;Kohlström et al, 2017;Morris et al, 2020;Van Dijk, 2015;Yesberg & Bradford, 2019).…”