Improving Police Legitimacy by Measuring All That Matters: Reflections from the United States and France

Abstract

Purpose

Throughout the world the police have undergone considerable criticism for a lack of transparency and accountability. Many police agencies across the world have been grappling with how to improve transparency and accountability, as well as public acceptance of the police, most especially in minority and immigrant communities, which are the places where aggressive police tactics are often most visible.

Methodology/approach

This chapter considers policing in Boston, United States, and Bordeaux, France, framed by a three-part medical intervention model. The central thesis here is that in their quest to shed their other social support roles or in undercounting and undervaluing such efforts the police lose an opportunity to reframe the police legitimacy discussion. While issues of police legitimacy have been predominantly framed as fair treatment at the point of being stopped, admonished, arrested, or detained, much of what the police do to actually support communities is not much accounted for in the present legitimacy discourse.

Findings

Our preliminary findings suggest that public contact with the police goes well beyond issues of crime. Individuals and communities use the police for preventing harm, responding to a wide array of needs and for mitigating harm and fear, all of which help frame public opinion toward the police and hence shape the level of legitimacy accorded the police.

Originality/value

Analysis of police data from Boston and impressions from a developing effort in Bordeaux consider how the police are organized and what they do in these very different cultures, thereby broadening the conception and measurement of police efforts that support or detract from legitimacy.

Citation

Greene, J.R., Mouhanna, C., Taheri, S.A. and Jones, D.S. (2016), "Improving Police Legitimacy by Measuring All That Matters: Reflections from the United States and France", The Politics of Policing: Between Force and Legitimacy (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 153-172. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-613620160000021009