Public attitudes toward the police

Jesilow, Paul; Meyer, Jon’a F.; Namazzi, Nazi

doi:10.1108/07358549510102767

Cited by 138 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Individual attitudinal characteristics also have been shown to influence satisfaction with police. Hindelang [14] found that Republicans held more favorable attitudes towards police than Democrats, a proposition confirmed by Zamble and Annesley and Vaughn [35] . Perhaps these findings reflect poles on an authoritarian/antiauthoritarian continuum.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 86%

The Importance of Police Performance as a Determinant of Satisfaction with Police

Larsen¹

2009

American Journal of Economics and Business Administration

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Problem statement: Citizen satisfaction with police performance is an important concern of public managers because police performance is central to citizens and accounts for a large share of urban budgets. Also, there is substantial disagreement in the literature regarding determents of citizen satisfaction. Approach: Logistic regression was used to investigate the results of three public opinion surveys, conducted biannually, to identify determinants of citizen satisfaction with police. Results: The explanatory power of the models was indicated by concordance of over .80. The findings indicated that satisfaction was largely determined by citizen perception of police behaviors. Four variables reflecting perceptions of police performance were particularly important: Response time to a crime in progress, visibility on the street, the quality of the relationship between the police and community and police efforts to reduce crime, indicating a chi square significance of <0.001. Almost all demographic and other individual factors, as well as subjective measures of crime severity in the respondent's neighborhood were insignificant or less important. Conclusion/Recommendations: The findings suggested that public officials could improve citizen satisfaction by focusing on specific aspects of police behavior. Training programs should be oriented accordingly. Further research regarding how citizens interpret certain words, gestures, postures, or other behaviors by police promises to enhance satisfaction.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 86%

The Importance of Police Performance as a Determinant of Satisfaction with Police

Larsen¹

2009

American Journal of Economics and Business Administration

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“…Jesilow, Meyer and Namazzi (1995), for instance, found that ethnicity is not a good predictor of attitudes toward police. Frank and colleagues (1996) actually found that African Americans in Detroit held more favorable views of the police than did White residents.…”

Section: Racementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A growing number of studies, however, question the primacy of race and stress the importance of neighborhood contextual characteristics in shaping citizens' evaluations of police. Some researchers find that the effect of race or ethnicity is not significant when neighborhood contextual variables are simultaneously considered (e.g., Cao et al, 1996;Jesilow, Meyer, & Namazzi, 1995;Sampson & Jeglum-Bartusch, 1998;Schuman & Gruenberg, 1972). Others specifically suggest that neighborhood class status plays an equally important, if not greater, role in determining satisfaction with police (Dunham & Alpert, 1988;Weitzer, 1999Weitzer, , 2000.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Class or Neighborhood Context: Which Matters More in Measuring Satisfaction with Police?

Wu¹,

Sun²,

Triplett³

2009

Justice Quarterly

252

267

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The primary purpose of this study is to assess the relative effects of race and class, at both individual and neighborhood levels, on public satisfaction with police. Using hierarchical linear modeling on 1,963 individuals nested within 66 neighborhoods, this study analyzes how individual-level variables, including race, class, age, gender, victimization and contact with police, and neighborhood-level factors, including racial composition, concentrated disadvantage, residential mobility and violent crime rate, influence residents' satisfaction with police. The results from the individual-level analysis indicate that both race and class are equally important predictors. African Americans and lower-class people tend to be less satisfied with police. The significant effects of race and class, however, disappear when neighborhood-level characteristics are considered simultaneously. Neighborhood racial composition affects satisfaction with police, with residents in predominately White and racially mixed neighborhoods having more favorable attitudes than those in predominately African American communities. Further analyses reveal that African Americans in economically advantaged neighborhoods are less likely than Whites in the same kind of neighborhoods to be satisfied with police, whereas African Americans and Whites in disadvantaged communities hold similar levels of satisfaction with police. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

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“…If residents' dissatisfaction with the police in disadvantaged communities is in part a function of greater opportunities for and fewer constraints on police misconduct and if these opportunities and constraints are related to the level of crime and disorganization in those communities, then it is reasonable to expect that citizens' opinions of the police will be lower in neighborhoods with high levels of street crime or in places where residents perceive a great deal of crime (Brown and Benedict 2002). Communities whose residents believe that crime is a serious problem in their neighborhoods are more likely than residents of other areas to be critical of the police (Huebner, Schafer, and Bynum 2004;Jesilow, Meyer, and Namazzi 1995;RAND 2005;Weitzer and Tuch 2006), and the same is true for those who report that a violent crime occurred in the neighborhood in the past year (Weitzer and Tuch 2002). The same pattern is evident when the measure is the official crime rate: Areas high in violent crime register lower levels of approval of the police (Murty et al 1990;Reisig and Parks 2000;Sampson and Bartusch 1998;Schafer, Huebner, and Bynum 2003).…”

Section: Neighborhood Crime Disorder and Policingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Police–Community Relations in a Majority-Black City

Weitzer

Tuch

Skogan

2008

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

140

111

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Minority racial and ethnic groups often view themselves as targets of abusive treatment at the hands of the police. Although racial variation in public assessments of the police in the United States has been amply documented in past research, less research has explored the sources of these differences at the intersection of demographic, interactional, and ecological levels. This article examines the role of each factor in shaping citizens' perceptions of police misconduct, racial differences in these perceptions, and the reasons underlying them. The locus of the study is also important. Most research on police-community relations has been conducted in cities whose populations and police departments are majority White in composition, despite the growing number of minority-White cities. The present study draws on data from residents of a majority-Black city with a majority-Black police department: Washington, DC. The findings contribute to our understanding of policing in such underresearched cities.

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Public attitudes toward the police

Cited by 138 publications

References 10 publications

The Importance of Police Performance as a Determinant of Satisfaction with Police

The Importance of Police Performance as a Determinant of Satisfaction with Police

Race, Class or Neighborhood Context: Which Matters More in Measuring Satisfaction with Police?

Police–Community Relations in a Majority-Black City

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