Examining the predictors of the public’s trust in the police using local data

ABSTRACT

Assessing public attitudes toward the police is a mainstay of policing research because of the importance of police-community relations for the betterment of society. To have a better understanding of the antecedents of public trust in the police, we analyze data from residents of the Hampton Roads region of Southeast Virginia. Our findings indicate that older respondents, those who believe that the police treat racial and ethnic minorities equally as they do whites, and those who believe that the police protect people from crime expressed higher levels of trust in the police. Conversely, males, Blacks, and those who earned $50,000 or less expressed lower levels of trust in the police. To our surprise, we found that protection from crime appeared to matter more for community members than the police’s treatment of racial and ethnic minorities as far as trust in the police was concerned. This means that police effectiveness remains a crucial component of policing, even if the way the police treat minority community members is also very important for improving police-community relations. We point out the implications of our findings for police-community relations, public policy, and future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust in police
• policing and race
• police effectiveness
• Hampton Roads region of Southeast Virginia
• minorities and police

Acknowledgment

The authors express their sincere gratitude to the reviewers and editors for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The 2021 annual LIHR survey was the twelfth collected by Old Dominion University’s Social Science Research Center. The first ten LIHR surveys were random surveys carried out via the telephone, but the 2020 survey was web-based as a result of Covid-19. The 2021 survey employed a mixed-methods approach consisting of telephone calls and web-based surveys. The SSRC used this methodology because of labor shortages and concerns about COVID-19 (and hence social distancing). These changes in data collection formats over the years thus limit to a degree: (a) our ability to compare the pre-2020, 2020, and 2021 LIHR results, and (b) the generalizability of the 2021 data.

2. The 93 respondents classified as ‘other’ belonged to the following groups: 25 identified as Asian, 13 as American Indian/Alaskan Native, 2 as Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 28 as multiracial, and 25 respondents did not select any specific racial category. We combined these racial categories because of their small numbers in the sample.

3. Scholars have argued than VIF values should be less than 10, so our VIF values strongly support our argument of no multicollinearity in the models (for example, see Pallant, 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel K. Pryce

Daniel K. Pryce, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University. He was the recipient of the 2017 Dean’s Excellence in Research Award and the 2018 Chancellor’s Award for Research at North Carolina Central University, his previous employer. He is the author/co-author of 30 peer-reviewed articles, which have appeared in leading journals including Crime & Delinquency, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Security Journal, Police Practice and Research, Criminal Justice Studies, Police Quarterly, Policing and Society, Du Bois Review, and Child Abuse & Neglect. His co-authored paper that examined the American public’s views about the Diversity Visa Lottery (DVL) program was recently published in Sociological Perspectives.

Victoria M. Time

Victoria M. Time is Professor and University Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University. She is author of numerous scholarly books and journal articles. Her research interests include, comparative and international justice issues, crimes of culture, theory, and contemporary legal issues.