Legitimizing policing practices: a study of stakeholder perceptions of police trustworthiness, effectiveness and relationship with the community

ABSTRACT

In an attempt to better meet the needs of the communities, the Tuvalu Police Service (TPS) commissioned a survey to investigate stakeholder perceptions of police service provision across its nine islands. This paper presents the findings of the survey and examines the responses of community residents (N = 1896) to determine public perceptions of police trustworthiness, police effectiveness and the relationship between the TPS and the community. The results suggest community residents have positive views of the TPS as service providers. However, there are mixed views about police trustworthiness and the ability of TPS officers to respond to crime. We examine how community policing in Tuvalu shapes public perceptions of police, thus building on a small body of scholarship examining perceptions of police in the developing world. As such, this study contributes new knowledge regarding public perceptions of the TPS and police fairness in Tuvalu, an area hitherto under researched in the policing literature examining policing in the South Pacific. It also informs police practice regarding improving policing in communities where justice systems are dominated by cultural practices involving community elders and chiefly councils.

KEYWORDS:

• Community perceptions
• police trustworthiness
• performance and legitimacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danielle Watson

Danielle Watson is the coordinator of the Pacific Policing Programme at the University of the South Pacific, Fiji. She conducts research on police/civilian relations on the margins with particular interests in hotspot policing, police recruitment and training as well as many other areas specific to policing in developing country contexts. Her research interests are multidisciplinary in scope as she also conducts research geared towards the advancement of tertiary teaching and learning. She is the principal researcher on two ongoing projects ‘Policing Pacific Island Communities’ and ‘Re-Imagining Graduate Supervision at Regional Universities’. She is also the lead author (with Erik Blair) of Reimagining Graduate Supervision in Developing Contexts: A Focus on Regional Universities (2018, Taylor and Francis), and sole author of Police and the Policed: Language and Power Relations on the Margins of the Global South (2018, Palgrave Pivot).

Francis D. Boateng

Francis D. Boateng is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the department of legal studies at the University of Mississippi. He received both his MA and PhD in criminal justice and criminology from Washington State University. His main research interests include comparative criminal justice, comparative policing, Police legitimacy, international security, victimology, quantitative research, crime, law and justice. In addition to serving as a permanent reviewer for more than a dozen highly ranked academic referred journals, Dr. Boateng has published in several top tier journals, including Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Policing and Society, International Criminal Justice Review, Victims & Offenders: An International Journal of Evidence-based Research, Policy, and Practice and Asian Journal of Criminology. His manuscripts have been scheduled to appear in International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, International Journal of Police Science and Management and Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice.

Toby Miles-Johnson

Dr Toby Miles-Johnson is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (SFHEA) UK working within the School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, QLD, Australia. Toby received his Doctorate of Philosophy – Criminology from The University of Queensland (2013). Toby’s research and work has been cited and discussed within the 2017 US report: An Evidence-Assessment of the Recommendations of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, in association with the International Association of Chiefs of Police; George Mason University; and The Lauran and John Arnold Foundation. Toby’s research contributes to key areas in ‘Police Training’ and ‘Policing Diverse Communities’. Toby’s research interests include: Policing, Policing Minority Groups, Threat and Victimisation, Procedural Justice, Gender Victimisation and Crime, Sexuality Victimisation and Crime, Domestic Violence in the Queer Community, and Prejudiced Motivated Crime (Hate Crime).