Are Trustworthiness and Legitimacy ‘Hard to Win, Easy to Lose’? A Longitudinal Test of the Asymmetry Thesis of Police-Citizen Contact

Thiago Rodrigues Oliveira · Jonathan Jackson · Kristina Murphy · Ben Bradford

95 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Quantitative Criminology

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Policing Practices and Perceptions Criminal Justice and Penology Public Policy and Administration Research

Abstract

Abstract Objectives Test the asymmetry thesis of police-citizen contact that police trustworthiness and legitimacy are affected more by negative than by positive experiences of interactions with legal agents by analyzing changes in attitudes towards the police after an encounter with the police. Test whether prior attitudes moderate the impact of contact on changes in attitudes towards the police. Methods A two-wave panel survey of a nationally representative sample of Australian adults measured people’s beliefs about police trustworthiness (procedural fairness and effectiveness), their duty to obey the police, their contact with the police between the two waves, and their evaluation of those encounters in terms of process and outcome. Analysis is carried out using autoregressive structural equation modeling and latent moderated structural models. Results The association between both process and outcome evaluation of police-citizen encounters and changes in attitudes towards the police is asymmetrical for trust in police effectiveness, symmetrical for trust in procedural fairness, and asymmetrical (in the opposite direction expected) for duty to obey the police. Little evidence of heterogeneity in the association between encounters and trust in procedural fairness and duty to obey, but prior levels of perceived effectiveness moderate the association between outcome evaluation and changes in trust in police effectiveness. Conclusions The association between police-citizen encounters and attitudes towards the police may not be as asymmetrical as previously thought, particularly for changes in trust in procedural fairness and legitimacy. Policy implications include considering public-police interactions as ‘teachable moments’ and potential sources for enhancing police trustworthiness and legitimacy.

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References

2007Deciding on the Number of Classes in Latent Class Analysis and Growth Mixture Modeling: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study 2001Bad is Stronger than Good 2006Why People Obey the Law 2003The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing 2014The Performance of RMSEA in Models With Small Degrees of Freedom 2000Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Latent Interaction Effects with the LMS Method 2012Beyond Procedural Justice: A Dialogic Approach to Legitimacy in Criminal Justice 2012Why do People Comply with the Law?: Legitimacy and the Influence of Legal Institutions

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