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Although many studies have considered burnout in the human services, little research on burnout has focused on police officers. This study aims to examine the relationship between burnout and police officers' attitudes towards the use of force and attitudes towards the use of social skills to solve problems.

Data were collected from 766 police officers in Norway using anonymously completed questionnaires.

Police officers reporting higher levels of cynicism also held more favorable attitudes towards the use of force; police officers reporting higher levels of professional efficacy also held more favorable attitudes towards the use of social skills to solve problems.

Future research needs to examine these findings in other countries and using longitudinal research designs.

Organizations are advised to monitor burnout levels of front‐line service workers and introduce structures and processes to reduce burnout levels.

This study has value for senior police management and employment counselors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of punitive attitudes towards young offenders among police officers. This included an examination of variables such as officers’ coping styles, mental health, rank and age. It was predicted that indirect coping styles, mental health difficulties, higher age and higher rank would negatively impact on punitive attitudes towards young offenders. Officers reporting direct coping strategies, low levels of mental health difficulties, lower rank and lower age were expected to have less punitive and more rehabilitative attitudes towards young offenders.

A sample of 83 police officers and community support officers from the UK completed standardised self-report measures.

Indirect coping strategies, high levels of mental health difficulties and high rank were all associated with more punitive attitudes, whilst age had no impact.

Results are discussed with regard to their research and real world implications. These include an impact of these findings on the job performance, community safety, approaches to policing, and the well-being of police officers. The importance of mental well-being, direct coping and positive attitudes towards young offenders is indicated in order for police officers to employ more proactive, consistent and fair behaviour with this group, leading to less punitive outcomes for young offenders, as well as improved police-youth relations.

The research findings link mental health, coping styles and rank to officers’ attitudes towards young offenders, which had not been fully examined in the literature previously. Results suggest that mental well-being and direct coping styles may serve as a protective factor against the development of punitive attitudes. This highlights the importance of providing support for mental well-being, as well as training in the areas of effective coping styles and issues surrounding young offenders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how celebrated cases affect attitudes toward police, controlling for key demographic, police contact, and neighborhood contextual variables.

The paper presents two waves of public opinion data measuring attitudes toward police, police services, police harassment, and officer guilt before and after a celebrated police misconduct trial. Data were collected by telephone from residents living in three areas.

The findings in the paper suggest that news consumption of this celebrated case had no significant effects on general attitudes toward police, police services, and concerns about police harassment. Media coverage, however, did effect citizen evaluation of the guilt of the officers involved in the case. The more a citizen read a newspaper or read about the case, the more likely she was to think that the officers were guilty. Concern about crime in the neighborhood was an important predictor of attitudes toward the police, and race effects were much more pronounced after media coverage of the case.

This paper highlights the need to examine more closely media coverage of celebrated cases and the effects of such high profile cases. In addition, it illustrates that public opinion research must be careful of contextual variables when conducting a study at a single point in time.

These findings also have critical implications for law enforcement agencies. The findings highlight the importance of police departments being prepared to respond to crisis events.

This paper is valuable to scholars and police practitioners because of its close examination of the effects of a celebrated case on various measures of public opinion of the police. Although there have many studies examining this general topic, research has ignored the impact of media coverage generally and coverage of high profile incidents.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that there was a need for a psychometric measure to assess attitudes specifically towards offenders with mental health problems. The “Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill” scale (CAMI; Taylor and Dear, 1981) was adapted to create a new psychometric measure; the “Police and Community Attitudes towards Offenders with Mental Illness” scale (PACAMI-O).

A sample of police and community participants (n=178) completed this scale through the online surveying system, Psychdata. The new psychometric measure utilised the same 40 items featured in the CAMI; although, the wording was adapted.

The internal reliability for the combined sample was high (α=0.929), which implied very good internal reliability. An exploratory factor analysis identified four new factors: Self-Preservation, Societal Reservation, Mental Health Awareness and Treatment Ideology. A t-test revealed there was a significant difference between the scores of the police and community sample, with the effect size depicting a large magnitude between the means (t(176)=p=0.019, η2=0.16).

The PACAMI-O scale appears adequate for measuring attitudes towards its targeted sample and has shown utility with; a professional group (police officers and custody sergeants) who potentially face such offenders (primarily in the context of using Section 136 of the Mental Health Act). It therefore has practical implications in assessing attitudes with other groups within forensic mental health.

Assessing attitudes towards offenders with mental health problems would enable a better understanding of the formation of negative attitudes and stigmatisation and therefore, ways of tackling treatment, rehabilitation and also community reintegration.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the social background of Norwegian and Swedish police students. Are there differences in the students’ social background, and if so, are such differences reflected in different attitudes and career plans among the students?

The questions are explored on the basis of survey data on all Norwegian and Swedish police students who started their education in 2009 (n=737). The methods employed are cross-tabular analysis and multivariate linear regression.

The results show that a larger proportion of Norwegian police students have highly educated parents, compared to the Swedish. However, students’ social background does not seem to be important for their orientation towards theory and knowledge or their plans for doing operational police work.

An important question for the future's police educators is whether a study with a formal bachelor status will attract a different type of students. These results show that the Norwegian police education with a formal bachelor degree attracts more students with highly educated parents, but the importance of attracting students with a given social background to the police profession seems to be limited.

There are no previous comparative studies on recruitment to police education, or studies of police recruitment that focus especially on the importance of social background.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe police officers' opinions on the prevailing anxieties, feeling of fears and threats, attitudes towards crime and punishment.

The paper took a quantitative approach to data collection that included a survey on a representative sample of the Slovene police.

Comparisons of attitudes (anxieties of everyday troubles, feelings of insecurity, importance of appropriate measures against crime and adequate severity of punishment) has been conducted to find similarities and differences between police officers regarding gender and age. The results show that male police officers and senior police officers have more conservative attitudes towards the most appropriate measures against crime and are more likely to defend severe punishment of offenders. Such attitudes indicate persistence of traditional authoritarian police orientation in (post)modern society.

The results are generalizable for the Slovenian police but not generalizable for the police worldwide.

A useful source of information learning about some characteristics of police professional culture and police officers' attitudes towards punishment and their understanding of threats in society.

This paper furthers understanding of police occupational culture in a new democratic country.

Recent research suggests that there is not widespread support for the police among juveniles. Unfortunately, this research typically involves either examining the attitudes of boys toward the criminal justice system, or includes gender as one of many factors that explains attitudes. The present study, using survey responses from 431 females, examines the differences in the attitudes and experiences of girls as related to the police.

Data for this study were collected using self‐administered surveys distributed to 9th through 12th grade public high school students in the greater Cincinnati (Ohio) area.

The findings suggest that overall attitudes of black and white girls toward the police are significantly different from one another. Moreover, when a regression equation was estimated, race continued to be a significant predictor of less positive attitudes. However, seeing and hearing about police misconduct aimed at a third party (vicarious experiences of misconduct) was a stronger predictor of girls' attitudes toward the police.

This study was limited to juveniles residing in and around a metropolitan area. Future research should explore the experiences of teenagers in rural areas with the police, and how these experiences may impact on their attitudes toward law enforcement.

Highlights the different attitudes of black and white girls towards the police.

The purpose of this paper is to use Klinger's theory of negotiated order to examine whether district crime and deviance levels exert influence on levels of police cynicism towards district residents. A secondary purpose is to discuss the policy implications for the proposed relationship between district crime and police cynicism.

Interviews from the Project on Policing Neighborhood (POPN) and patrol district crime data were used to study whether crime and deviance levels exert influence on police cynicism of district residents (n=574). It was hypothesized that officers would be more cynical of citizens in districts with higher rates of violent crime compared with their colleagues assigned to districts with lower rates of violent crime.

The results of OLS regression analyses indicate that district violent crime rate was related to police cynicism and in the direction hypothesized, controlling for both individual and occupational covariates. Officers with more experience were also found to have lower levels of cynicism.

Items used to construct the measure of police cynicism were adapted from the POPN survey data set which asked general questions about officer perceptions of district residents. Further research and better measures are necessary in order to examine the determinants of police cynicism with implications for explaining behavior. Findings from the study might be used by policymakers in terms of police assignment and deployment to high crime areas.

This is the first empirical attempt at examining Klinger's theory of social ecology. The study incorporates a policy argument based on the theoretical precepts and the results from the data analysis.

Policing activities aim to provide a safe environment for tourists. With the recent major protests that have erupted around the world, and the novel use of excessive police force against protestors, people may wonder if the policing deployment is for destination safety or to deter tourists from visiting. This paper aims to investigate anti-police and pro-police attitudes and tourists' behavioural responses towards a popular destination experiencing an ongoing social movement.

Data were collected between December 2019 and January 2020 (during the social movement). An online survey with a snowball sampling method was adopted to reach international tourists who were aware of the social movement in Hong Kong.

The results revealed that an individual with an anti-police attitude was found to be related to cognitive and affective destination images and perceived risks while those holding a pro-police attitude were more concerned with destination images only. No significant correlation was found between attitudes towards policing and travel intention.

This research presents a first attempt to investigate the relationship between tourists' policing attitudes and their behavioural responses during an ongoing social movement in a popular destination city.

Financial crime continues to represent a crime type that costs billions of dollars per year. It is likely more widespread than any other criminal offence. Despite this, it remains an area that is often ignored, or at best neglected by police. Police agencies typically fail to invest resources and training in upskilling police in financial crime investigation. The current study evaluates an agency-wide training initiative undertaken by the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Australia.

The QPS mandated completion of an in-house online financial crime training program for all officers, up to and including the rank of senior sergeant. Matched pre- and post-training data of 1,403 officers were obtained.

The research found that police are under-trained in financial crime. The findings suggest that short online training programs can produce important improvements in knowledge and confidence in financial crime investigation. Critically, attitudes about this crime type which may be deterring officers from engaging in financial crime investigation can be improved.

The current research finds that police agencies need to more heavily invest in training officers to investigate financial crime and such investment will have positive outcomes. The first step involves improving knowledge, skills and attitudes towards this crime type. Further research is needed to understand why training, particularly related to attitudinal change, is more effective for different cohorts of police and how future training programs should be adapted to maximise success.