Search results

Purpose – Emergency situations are known to have significant effects on public attitudes toward the police. However, little is known about these effects over prolonged periods of time, and how they vary across different types of attitudes. Moreover, it is unclear what the root causes of fluctuations in public sentiments of the police in emergency situations are. The present chapter reviews the findings of a research project designed to address these questions.

Methodology/Approach – A three-wave panel survey carried out in Israel in the first three peaks (and corresponding lockdowns) of the COVID-19 pandemic: April, September and December, 2020.

Findings – Following what appears to be a rise in support for the police at the first peak of the pandemic, the authors find a significant drop in numerous types of attitudes in the second peak. Between the second and the third peaks, broad evaluations of the police (not directly related to the pandemic) stabilized, while some pandemic-specific attitudes continued to deteriorate. The drop in diffused support for the police was associated with participants’ assessments of the government’s performance in handling the pandemic.

Originality/Value – Beyond shedding light on fluctuations in public attitudes toward the police over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, these findings add to our more general understanding of what happens to the relationship between the police and the public in emergency situations.

This chapter analyzes how institutional pressures have allowed for continuities as well as brought about changes in modern police organizations in Korea. When facing a legitimacy crisis, the Korean law enforcement system has typically responded with organizational restructuring. Strong myth-building patterns compensate for the lack of moral legitimacy of the police, particularly under authoritarian-military regimes that suppress democratization movements in Korea. Even after seemingly radical organizational changes aimed at placing the police under democratic control, highly institutionalized core structures of the police remain in place. Performance reform after the economic crisis, which was proceeded from reformers’ shared belief in the market-driven solutions, diagnosed the Korean police as a big, inefficient, and self-serving bureaucracy, a diagnosis that eventually caused gradual deterioration in the taken-for-grantedness of policing activities. The internet and social media made the Korean police even more vulnerable to external challenges and a questioning of its legitimacy.

In this chapter, I reflect on the foundations of the “fair policing from the inside out” approach to identify elements that may complement and refine this theoretical framework.

I address the question of how fair policing can be achieved from a multidisciplinary perspective. Insights and empirical evidence from criminology, psychology, management, and political science/public administration are used to theorize the relationship between internal and external procedural justice.

Both the theoretical framework itself and the conceptual model that has been derived from it are refined. In total, four aspects are elaborated: (1) I stress more explicitly the potential mediating role of moral alignment with citizens; (2) I point more explicitly at the potential mediating role of trust in supervisors and moral alignment with supervisors; (3) I hypothesize that strain/stress may mediate the relationship between internal and external procedural fairness; and (4) I hypothesize several links between mediators.

This chapter contributes to the challenge of theorizing the origins of fair policing. It aims at widening the scope of police research.

Videos of police abuse are often spread through technology, raising questions around how perceptions of police are impacted by these images, especially for 18–24-year-olds who are constantly “logged on.” Limited research investigates the impact of social media on attitudes toward police accounting for age and race. The present study utilizes 19 in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of urban college students who regularly use social media in order to understand how they have been impacted by this content. The findings suggest the necessity of using an intersectional framework to understand the impact of tech-witnessed violence. While no gender differences were uncovered, racial differences did surface. White participants described being minimally influenced by videos of police misconduct, rationalizing it as a “few bad apples.” In contrast, participants of color, except those with family members in law enforcement, described being negatively impacted. Viral content contributed to negative opinions of police, emotional distress, and fears of victimization. Ultimately, videos of police brutality do not impact young populations equally. Instead, they are comparatively more harmful to young people of color who spend more time on social media, can envision themselves as the victims, and experience feelings of fear, despair, and anger after watching these videos.

Purpose – Statistics about the level of crime continue to attract public and political attention but are often presented in conflicting ways. In England and Wales, police-recorded crimes are no longer considered “national statistics” and, instead, the crime survey of England and Wales (CSEW) is used. However, it is not clear why partial population data (e.g., police-recorded crime) are considered less reliable or valid for measuring temporal crime trends in society than inferential statistical estimation models that are based on samples such as CSEW. This is particularly the case for approximating rare events like high-harm violence and specific harmful modus operandi (e.g., knife crime and firearms). In this chapter, the authors cross-reference victim survey and police-recorded data to determine similarities and contradictions in trends.

Methods – Using police data and CSEW estimates, the authors contrast variance and logarithmic trend lines since 1981 across a range of data categories and then triangulate the results with assault records from hospital consultations.

Findings – Change in crime rates in recent years is neither as unique nor extreme as promulgated in media coverage of crime. Moreover, analyses show conflicting narratives with a host of plausible but inconclusive depictions of the “actual” amount of crime committed in the society. The authors also conclude that neither source of data can serve as the benchmark of the other. Thus, both data systems suffer from major methodological perils, and the estimated crime means in CSEW, inferred from samples, are not necessarily more valid or accurate than police-recorded data (particularly for low-frequency and high-harm crimes). On the other hand police-recorded data are susceptible to variations in recording practices. As such, the authors propose a number of areas for further research, and a revised taxonomy of crime classifications to assist with future public interpretations of crime statistics.

Originality – There is much public and academic discourse about different sources of crime measurement yet infrequent analysis of the precise similarities and differences between the methods. This chapter offers a new perspective on long-term trends and highlights an issue of much contemporaneous concern: rising violent crime.

Narrative criminology has continued to expand as an important theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of crime and justice. However, the vast majority of narrative work focuses on the narrative development of those identified as criminal offenders, and little research has explored the narratives of those employed within the criminal justice system. This chapter examines the importance of police storytelling and the unique narratives vital to the cultural life and institution of policing. Police stories are an important part of the ‘meaning-making structure’ in policing and often convey particular power well beyond the limitations of formal organizational or agency policy. Police stories frequently influence understandings of the nature of social problems; community change and decay; and even understandings of race, class, and gender. Police narratives and stories also offer some unique methodological challenges for narrative scholars. Analysis of police stories must focus on the underlying plot details while still analysing the themes or metaphors provided by the narrative. This may require specific attention to the role the story plays in police culture, training, and development of organizational cohesion. Furthermore, narrative researchers must explore the shared narratives distinctive to the profession, while still examining unique meanings that stories convey to different departments and even specialized units. Finally, access to police organizations and individual officers can represent unique challenge for narrative researchers. By examining police narratives, we gain unique insight into the production and maintenance of police authority and culture accomplished through the storytelling process.

Purpose – We investigate the impact of overlapping crises of COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests on one major US police department, focusing on staffing and officer proactivity.

Methodology/Approach – The study investigates the impact of the two crises on operational capacity. Using Bayesian interrupted time-series analysis, the authors investigate if officer proactivity levels were adversely impacted in the short and long terms.

Findings – A statewide stay-at-home order (SAHO) was associated with a sharp decline in proactive contacts, but that effect dissipated quickly. However, the Floyd protests were associated with a sharp decline in proactivity, which persisted throughout the study period.

Originality/Value – The findings of this study contribute to ongoing research agendas that seek to understand the impact of dual, overlapping crises on US police departments and the communities they serve. The authors demonstrate a methodological approach capable of disentangling both crises’ effects on police activity levels.

This chapter seeks to illuminate the interconnectedness of procedural justice, use of force, and occupational culture in relation to police legitimacy.

The authors review the existing literature and offer an integrated methodological approach that would better assist researchers in their quest to enhance police legitimacy.

Using a systematic design that assesses police legitimacy from a variety of sources has the potential to help answer critical questions with regard to improving police practice.

This is a novel study approach, which has yet to be implemented but which may offer great insight with respect to improving police legitimacy.