Sociology Commons^™

Racial Differences In Conceptualizing Legitimacy And Trust In Police, Erin M. Kearns, Emma Ashooh, Belen Lowrey-Kinberg

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Scholarly debate on how best to conceptualize legitimacy and trust in police has generally assumed these conceptualizations are stable across demographics. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this may not be the case. We examine how the public conceptualizes legitimacy and trust in police, how public conceptualizations relate to academic debate on these terms, and how public views differ between and within racial groups. This work is exploratory, though it is rooted in differences found in theoretically driven empirical work on the subject. Data are from online, national samples of White (N = 650), Black (N = 624), and …

Demeanor And Police Culture: Theorizing How Civilian Cooperation Influences Police Officers, Justin T. Pickett, Justin Nix

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to revisit classic theoretical arguments regarding the broad effects of civilian demeanor on policing and extend associated findings.

Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical framework draws on insights from the literatures on police culture, the group engagement model and fairness heuristic theory. The authors argue that demeanor is best conceptualized as the degree of procedural justice exhibited by civilians toward police. Theoretically, procedurally just cooperation should influence officers’ adherence to police culture by affecting their social identification and assessments of civilians’ motives and moral deservingness. To test the hypotheses, the authors surveyed sworn officers from a …

Legitimacy, Procedural Justice, And Neighborhood Dynamics: Thoughts On Police Reform, Robert Lyle Nicewarner

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Currently, there is much debate about how to alleviate tensions between communities and police. These tensions do not illustrate the full scope of the problem, but show us symptoms of a larger, more structural issue. Many scholars point to procedural justice tactics as a way to increase the legitimacy of the police; thus, creating a safer environment where citizens do not fear the police but respect, obey, and defer to them. However, not every neighborhood is the same and not every neighborhood needs the same kind of policing style. Drawing on theories of collective efficacy and social cognition I propose …

Why We Need Police, Justin Mccrary, Deepak Premkumar

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter discusses the essential role that the police have in deterring and reducing crimes, particularly the most violent and costly ones to society, such as murder. We begin by providing a brief overview of deterrence theory before discussing the empirical evidence on the efficacy of police staffing and various policing strategies on crime reduction. Using a framework developed in Weisburd and Eck (2004), we quickly evaluate the model of standard policing and then mainly focus on evidence behind three current policing practices: hot spots, problem- oriented, and proactive. Finally, we use the empirical evidence of police staffing to provide …