Police use of force and nativity: revisiting standing evidence of public opinion on police use of force

ABSTRACT

Police use of force is a topic of longstanding and ongoing concern in the criminal justice literature. Carter & Corra (2016) studied citizen perceptions of police use of force, establishing an empirical link between racial resentment and support for police use of force. We contend that the Carter and Corra study is instructive but lacks an important measure of nativity. Opinion differences between U.S. non-native-born and native-born persons have been shown to be noteworthy in prior studies of citizen behaviors, beliefs, perceptions and attitudes. We find that nativity is a powerful explanatory variable and offer empirical support for the ‘conflicted conservative’ theory. Consistent with Carter and Corra (2016) we find that racial resentment is a substantive explanatory variable.

KEYWORDS:

• Police use of force
• racial resentment
• nativity
• race
• conflicted conservative
• regional differences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We attempted to use an ordered probit statistical approach. However, the model developed violated the test of parallel lines and disallowed the use of an ordered probit approach.

2. We adjusted our timeframe because after 1993 the GSS survey was administered on a semi-annual basis. In the Carter and Corra (2016) analysis both the annual and semi-annual survey administration periods were used, a decision which more heavily weights observations from the pre-1994 period, potentially leading to biased estimates.

3. Generally, minimal use of force represents those individuals who either think that use of force is either never justified or when an individual is ‘attacking a policeman.’ Maximal use of force represents people who believe force is justified when a suspect is ‘attempting to escape’ or ‘saying vulgar or obscene things to the policeman.’

4. Individuals who scored moderate to very conservative on the POLVIEWS indicator and agreed that government funding should be increased for social welfare, the promotion of equality for Blacks, and health care were scored as ‘1’ in a newly created variable labeled ‘Conflicted Conservative.’ All other individuals were scored as ‘0.’

5. X1 = Racial resentment index; X2 = Foreign Born (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X3 = Male (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X4 = Age; X5 = Education in Years; X6 = Region (Treated as a Categorical Variable); X7 = Income; X8 = Attend Religious Services (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X9 = Political Views (1 = Very Liberal, 7 = Very Conservative); X10 = Conflicted Conservative (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X11 = Economic Individualism (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X12 = Year of Study; X13 = Black (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X14 = Hispanic (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X15 = Asian (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X16 = Social Trust (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X17 = Unemployment (1 = Yes, 0 = No); X18 = Population of city of residence.

6. The General Social Survey does not ask foreign-born respondents to indicate how long they have lived in the U.S. Age of respondent might be a rough indication of the likelihood of the length of time foreign-born respondents have lived in the U.S. The median age of foreign-born respondents is 41, and slightly more than 81% of foreign-born respondents are between 18 and 57. The correlation between respondent age and the probability of supporting police use of maximal force is r = 0.11 (p < 0.001). There is a very weak relationship between foreign-born respondent age and support for police use of maximal force. The predicted probability of foreign-born respondents’ support for police use of maximal force is normally distributed and leptokurtic (Mean = 0.27, s.e. = 0.0058, t = 46.226, p < 0.001). There is a weak relationship between age – albeit, a weak proxy for length of time in U.S. – and support for maximal use of force. There appears, however, no noticeable bimodal distribution that might indicate a wide gap between more recent (likely younger) immigrants and less recent (likely older) immigrants.

7. See Jefferis et al. (2011) for a good discussion of survey instrumentation and public opinion of police use of force.

8. Correlation coefficients for Region would be inappropriate because there is no clear direction across the categories (Northeast, South, Midwest, and West – the latter being the excluded category in the logistic regression analysis). In conducting appropriate chi-square and/or one-way ANOVAs to study the mean differences across the four regions, we find that significant regional differences exist – therefore, including region as a categorical variable in logistic regression is appropriate and does not contribute to inter-item correlation because it is not measured in a way that could be in any way correlated – rather, it serves in the same way as do blocking designs in the analysis of variance methodology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher A. Simon

Christopher A. Simon is Professor of Political Science at University of Utah. He has published articles in American Politics Research, Public Administration Review, and Social Science Quarterly. He is the author of Public Policy: Preferences & Outcomes, 3^rd Edition, Routledge Press.

Michael C. Moltz

Michael C. Moltz is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University. His most recent article was published in Energy Research & Social Science.

Nicholas P. Lovrich

Nicholas P. Lovrich is Regents Professor Emeritus and Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Professor of Political Science at Washington State University. He has published over 150 peer reviewed articles and book chapters in criminal justice, public administration, and public policy.