Public Satisfaction with Police Control of Disorder Crime: Does the Public Hold Police Accountable?

Abstract

This study expands the research on public satisfaction with the police by attempting to disentangle the relationships among disorder crime incidents reported to the police, residents' perceptions of disorder, and citizen satisfaction with police performance on order maintenance. The police accountability model and the demographic model are utilized to predict the variation of public satisfaction with police control of disorder (SWPD). The data used in this analysis were derived from a random-sample telephone survey of 1,215 Houston residents. Crime data were provided by the Houston Police Department and further extracted from the area surrounding each individual respondent's residence surveyed by using Geographic Information Systems technology. The main findings are that while the actual incidence of disorder crime had no direct impact on residents' perceptions of police performance on order maintenance, it did have a significant direct impact on their perceptions of disorder. This shows the utility of the accountability model in future research. Moreover, it was found that global satisfaction with police crime prevention was an important predictor of public SWPD in their immediate neighborhood.

Keywords:

• satisfaction with the police
• police control of disorder
• police accountability

Notes

1. The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1965), the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1967), the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1968).

2. Appendix A also includes the results of confirmatory factor analysis models with the following two latent variables, perception of disorder, and collective efficacy.

3. The full set of disorder offenses includes: other assault (aggravated assault not included), vandalism, prostitution and commercialized vice, narcotic drug law violations, gambling, DWIs, liquor laws violation, public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, curfew violations, and runaway notifications.

4. In AMOS, CMIN stands for the likelihood ratio Chi Square; df denotes degrees of freedom.

5. As suggested by one of the reviewers, we ran two additional SEM models. The first model removed all other assault incidents that accounted for 36.7% of total disorder offenses. The findings showed that the link between disorder crime at a .3-mile buffer and public perceptions of crime remained significant at .001 level (coefficient = .126 & SD = .027), and there was no direct effect of disorder crime on SWPD (coefficient = .004 & SD = .026). Overall, the significance levels of other coefficients remained similar to the results reported in Table 2. The second model excluded a large portion of other assaults that reportedly occurred in private places such as apartment units and residential houses while retaining those taking place in public locations such as apartment parking lots, streets, restaurants, malls, etc. This led to the elimination of 60.8% of total other assault incidents. The purpose was to assess if the nature of private vs. public spaces in which assaults occurred can have significant impact on residents’ perception of disorder and their satisfaction with the police. The results were similar to the first model where all other assaults were excluded. For example, disorder crime buffer remained a significant predictor of public perceptions of disorder (coefficient = .131 & SD = .028) while there was no significant relationship between disorder crime and SWPD in the SEM model. The fit indexes of the two models were both in the satisfactory range (CFI & GFI > .93 while RMSEA < .036).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jihong Solomon Zhao

Jihong “Solomon” Zhao is a professor in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University. His research focuses on police organizational change, officers' value orientation, job stress, and measurement in policing. He is the author of two books and more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles. He earned his PhD in 1994 from Washington State University, Pullman.

Chi-Fang Tsai

Chi-Fang Tsai is a doctoral student in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University. Her research areas include policing, juvenile delinquency, and application of law.

Ling Ren

Ling Ren is an assistant professor in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University. She earned her PhD from University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2006. Her research interests include policing, cross-national research on crime and delinquency, and the applications of quantitative methodology.

Yung-Lien Lai

Yung-Lien Lai is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Criminology at National Taipei University. He received his PhD in 2011 from Sam Houston State University. His research interests include policing and corrections.