Racial/Ethnic Connection with Confidence in the Police: Equal Treatment Matters

Recent discussions on confidence in the police by race/ethnicity call for shifting the research focus from whether race/ethnicity matters to why and how it matters. The purpose of this article is to decipher the mediating role of the quality of police treatment in a nuanced study of racial impact on...

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Autor principal: Ren, Ling (Autor)
Otros Autores: Luo, Fei ; Nielson, Kyler
Tipo de documento: Electrónico Artículo
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: 2022
En: Canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice
Año: 2022, Volumen: 64, Número: 3, Páginas: 49-70
Acceso en línea: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Palabras clave:
confiance envers la police
Confidence in the police
contacts entre la police et les résidents
effet de l’appartenance raciale ou ethnique
facteurs de médiation
mediating factors
perceived equal treatment
perception d’un traitement égal
police–resident contacts
race/ethnicity effect
Descripción
Sumario:Recent discussions on confidence in the police by race/ethnicity call for shifting the research focus from whether race/ethnicity matters to why and how it matters. The purpose of this article is to decipher the mediating role of the quality of police treatment in a nuanced study of racial impact on confidence in the police. Data were collected from a two-wave random-sample telephone survey of approximately 2400 residents in Houston, TX. The results confirm the expected effect of race/ethnicity on confidence in the police, net of neighborhood contexts and respondents’ demographics. More importantly, we found that the three measures tapping into the quality of police treatment during police-resident encounters partially mediate the race/ethnicity effect on views of police. Perceived equal treatment emerged as having the strongest effect. When the combined race/ethnicity sample was divided into three racial/ethnic subsamples, perceived equal treatment exerted the largest effects on confidence in the police both within and across the groups. Its effect is most pronounced for the Black subsample. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.
ISSN:1911-0219
DOI:10.3138/cjccj.2021-0050