Police satisfaction and disorder: results from a survey of a semi-rural community

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relationship between disorder and police satisfaction while controlling for other relevant factors related to police satisfaction such as race, gender, age, and prior police contact. We present results from a survey of residents in a semi-rural southern city. This survey location provides a unique opportunity to explore the effects of disorder and social cohesion on police satisfaction in an environment that incorporates elements of both urban and rural environments. The results indicate that white respondents, older respondents, and those that were more integrated into their neighbourhoods were more satisfied with the police. Variation in the levels of disorder did not, however, have an impact of citizen satisfaction. The implications for these findings are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Law enforcement
• police accountability
• disorder

Acknowledgement

The views expressed in this research are entirely the authors and do not necessarily reflect that of the City of Greenville, NC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Models were estimated using both the dichotomous measure of district and using separate variables to represent each district with district A as the omitted variable. The results were unchanged.

Additional information

Funding

The current research was funded by the City of Greenville, NC by contract A11-0268-001.