Public views about the police are central to effective law enforcement efforts. Law enforcement agencies often measure public attitudes toward police and try to improve their image with the public because their job requires public trust and cooperation. The British government, for example, created a policy that emphasized a ”customer orientation among police forces” (Skogan 1996), which thus may increase the importance of national and local surveys about public evaluations of police performance. Much of police work is reactive, occurring after citizens have reported crimes or suspicious behavior. The police thus rely on public assistance to obtain accurate reporting of crimes so that they may catch criminals and prevent future crimes. In addition to reporting crimes, citizens often are witnesses of criminal activity; in order to identify suspects and report crucial information, they must believe that the police are competent at protecting them from violent crime and are honest, law-abiding professionals. The shift toward more community policing and foot or bicycle patrols has heightened the importance of positive public attitudes toward the police because such methods require working closely with the public to prevent and reduce criminal activity (Huang and Vaughn 1996).
Public views of the fairness of the police also affect their compliance with the law. Based on systematic survey research, individuals who judge the police as less trustworthy are more likely to steal, speed, and drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs (Tyler 1990), and they are less likely to report crimes, work with the police in community policing activities, or report accidents or suspicious behavior to the police (Sunshine and Tyler 2003). Furthermore, it is important for the police to increase public support of the policing institution so that when corrupt or biased officers are caught the public does not lose their trust in the law enforcement institution as a whole.
A law enforcement system that stops, searches, and arrests minorities in a discriminatory way, or a system in which many officers lack integrity or are out of touch with community values, will not be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the public, and will not have authority to enforce the law. Legitimacy means that the public believes the police have the authority to enforce the law and should be obeyed because the citizens trust and respect their power to do so; thus, legitimacy is the linchpin of successful law enforcement. Discrimination, lack of integrity, and even incompetence at solving crimes can undermine legitimacy. Several studies have demonstrated that how fairly officers treat citizens and respect them is the most important determinant of legitimacy (Sunshine and Tyler 2003).
This article provides a brief review of the literature on public attitudes toward the police. The review focuses on published research using systematic, reliable surveys of community members primarily in North America, although, where available, European and Latin American surveys are covered. Public attitudes toward the police cover two distinct, related dimensions: how fairly the police treat citizens and how competent they are at controlling and preventing crimes. Fairness of treatment involves friendliness, respect, honesty, concern for citizens’ welfare, and nondiscriminatory and ethical behavior toward citizens and suspects. Competence includes several instrumental issues: How well can the police protect citizens from violent crime? How much effort do they exert to solve crimes? Are the police priorities consistent with what the public wants? Do they use force only in circumstances that the public would support? Before covering specific dimensions, public confidence in the police and evaluations of police performance in general are reviewed. Racial differences in attitudes toward the police are then covered and explanations for these differences examined. Linked to racial differences in attitudes is the police use of racial profiling to stop and search potential suspects, and police use of force. Public views on these topics are discussed.
Confidence in the Police
National surveys in many countries have asked the public whether they have a great deal, quite a lot, a little, or no confidence in many institutions such as the police, the criminal justice system, the military, religious organizations, public schools, the media, legislators, and big business. The police generally receive much higher confidence ratings than other institutions. Moreover, across countries, public confidence or trust ratings in the police compared to other branches of criminal justice such as the courts or prison system were at least twenty percentage points higher. For example, 64% of Americans, 76% of Australians, and 83% of Canadians indicated that they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the police, and these ratings were higher than all institutions except the military. Citizens in Latin American countries, however, have more negative views of the police. Across seventeen Latin American countries, representative national surveys found that only 30% expressed a great deal or some confidence in the police, whereas 72% were confident about the church and 50% expressed this view about television (Public Perceptions of Justice 2004).
The police also receive the most positive ratings from the public in surveys in which respondents are asked to provide a performance rating, such as excellent, good, fair, or poor, of how well they are doing their job. In general, the public holds positive views about police performance. American surveys during the last two decades indicate that between 50% and 60% of respondents have confidence in the police to protect them from violent crimes (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2003; Roberts and Stalans 2000). National surveys in America indicate that public support for expanding police monitoring of cell phones and e-mails to intercept communications has declined from 54% in 2001 to 36% in 2004 (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2003). This decline is in direct conflict with recent federal policies to engage in more wiretapping of suspected terrorists without legal warrants. Most Americans, however, do favor expanding undercover activities to penetrate terrorist groups, stronger security checks at airports, use of facial recognition technology to scan for suspected terrorists, and closer monitoring of banking and credit card transactions. However, there is disagreement among the public about police performance and fairness, which is covered in a later section.
Public Views of the Ethical Standards of the Police
Across three decades, two to three times as many minorities (20% to 30%) compared to Caucasians in national American polls have rated the police as having low or very low ethical standards (Ackerman et al. 2001). Views of police integrity and honesty also vary across countries. Based on the 2004 Transparency International Corruption Barometer given to large, randomly selected samples of adult citizens in each country, the United States, England, and Canada receive an average rating of 2.9 on a five-point scale where 1 is equal to not at all corrupt and 5 is equal to extremely corrupt. The police are seen as more corrupt in countries that have a short history of democracy and more internal conflicts such as Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria,
Poland, and South Africa, with these countries receiving a rating of 3.8 to 4.3. The citizens of the socialist countries of Iceland, Denmark, and Finland perceived the police as the least corrupt providing an average rating of 2 or less, whereas the more established European democratic or socialist countries such as Germany, Austria, Netherlands, and Spain receive a rating between 2.5 and 3. Research shows that exposure to media stories about police misconduct lowers public views of the police’s honesty and integrity (Weitzer and Tuch 2005).
Racial Differences in Attitudes toward the Police
Research during the last fifty years has consistently documented that African Americans distrust and have more negative views of the police than do Caucasian Americans (Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Roberts and Stalans 2000; Huang and Vaughn 1996). Fewer studies have examined Hispanic American attitudes and this group holds more complex views of the police, though additional research is required to draw more definitive conclusions on Hispanic Americans’ views (Weitzer and Tuch 2005). Whereas 70% of Caucasians expressed high confidence in the police, only 43% of minorities held this view in a 2004 Gallup poll (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2003). Other polls find that a substantial minority (17% to 30%) of African Americans, compared with 10% or fewer Caucasians, have little or no confidence in the police (see Roberts and Stalans 2000). Hispanic Americans and African Americans have similar and more negative views of the police’s honesty, ethical standards, and unfair treatment than do Caucasian Americans. However, Caucasians and Hispanics both rate officers as excellent or very good on helpfulness, friendliness, and solving crimes (see Roberts and Stalans 2000).
African Americans’ discontent covers all areas of policing such as dishonest and discriminatory treatment and ineffectiveness at responding to crimes in a timely manner, helping victims, or solving crimes. Hispanics are more discontent about the fairness of police officers’ treatment and their integrity.
Explanations for Racial Differences
What can explain minorities’ more negative views of the police? Studies have found that the neighborhood context shapes the public’s perceptions of police performance. Irrespective of race, individuals living in neighborhoods that have higher levels of disorder and crime have less positive views of police performance than individuals living in neighborhoods that have low levels of disorder or crime (Dunham and Alpert 1988; Maxson, Henning, and Sloane 2003). Individuals living in high-crime and disorderly neighborhoods rate police performance much lower, and racial differences in these ratings are not evident. Thus, the level of neighborhood disorder explains why African Americans rate police performance lower, because they are more likely to live in more disordered and crime-ridden neighborhoods. However, in both minimally and highly disordered neighborhoods, African Americans, as compared to Caucasians, believed that the police were substantially less respectful, concerned, fair, or trustworthy (Maxson, Henning, and Sloane 2003).
One of the largest disagreements across racial groups concerns whether the police treat minorities worse than Caucasians. The majority of African Americans and Hispanics believe that the police treat both African Americans and Hispanics worse than Caucasians, whereas the majority of Caucasians disagree. Only about one-quarter to one-third of Caucasians believe the police show discriminatory behavior toward minorities and treat Caucasians better than they do minorities (Weitzer and Tuch 2005). Most Caucasians do not acknowledge widespread and systematic discriminatory behavior of the police toward minorities, whereas most minorities do. Other national surveys replicate this wide divide between minorities’ and Caucasians’ views of discriminatory behavior by the police. The police use of race as an indicator of a higher likelihood of involvement in criminal activity has been labeled racial profiling and is controversial. In the 2004 Gallup poll, more than half of Caucasians and about two-thirds of African Americans and Hispanic Americans indicated that racial profiling is widespread in traffic stops. Thirty percent of Caucasians and Hispanics believed racial profiling was justified, whereas 23% of African Americans held this view. Based on a 2002 national survey on contact between police and the public, this perception of racial profiling in traffic stops does not result in a greater number of minority drivers being stopped by the police. The survey revealed that the likelihood of a traffic stop did not vary across race, with about 9% of Caucasians, Hispanics, and African Americans being stopped. However, once stopped by the police, minorities are significantly more likely to experience a ”pat-down” of their person for weapons or have their cars searched. Moreover, searches of African American compared to Caucasian drivers or their vehicles were more likely to be without the consent of the driver, but the police were less likely to find evidence of a crime in searches of African Americans than in searches of Caucasian drivers (Durose, Schmitt, and Langan 2005). Minorities thus may perceive the police’s greater propensity to search them as disrespectful and unfair treatment. Given the fact that more than 80% of searches do not yield evidence of criminal activity and more evidence is found against Caucasians (Durose,Schmitt, and Langan 2005), these public views should shape police behavior. Based on a 2002 national police-public contact survey, minorities also report that the police are more likely to threaten the use of force or to use force during their contact (Durose, Schmitt, and Langan 2005). Research shows that minorities’ and Caucasians’ differential direct experiences with the police as well as their vicarious experiences from their conversations with others may explain why minorities rate the police as providing less fair and respectful treatment (Weitzer and Tuch 2005).
Conclusions
The literature on public attitudes toward the police is vast and covers many aspects. The public holds more positive views of the police than any other justice institution and most public institutions. The public places great importance on respectful and fair treatment in their interactions with the police. The amount of disorder and criminal activity in their neighborhood shapes their views of police performance, whereas personal victimization has little effect. Victims and nonvictims do not have significantly different views of police performance in most studies (Roberts and Stalans 2000). Moreover, whether the police provided respectful treatment and took the time to listen to their experience, rather than whether the case was solved or the response time, shapes victims’ evaluations of the police. Negative direct encounters, stories of negative encounters with the police from family and friends, and media reports of misconduct all lower public views of the fairness and integrity ofthe police. Because minorities are more likely to live in neighborhoods with high levels of disorder or crime and are more likely to have negative direct or vicarious experiences, they are more distrustful of the police.
