Police Legitimacy in Community Context

The role of police and policing in the context of communities and neighborhood crime is central to flashpoints of violence and hostility throughout history. From the race riots across the United States in the 1960s (Allen, 1970; Horowitz, 1983; McPhail, Schweingruber, & McCarthy, 1998) to the recent uprisings in Ferguson (Newburn, 2014), scholarly and public interest strives to build a better understanding of how neighborhood dynamics shape the contours of attitudes toward police and enhance police legitimacy. Past research, however, sheds limited light on how neighborhoods influence attitudes toward police, how these attitudes might influence informal social control actions, and how intersections between informal social control and attitudes toward police impact on the variation of crime across neighborhoods.

Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that socially fragmented neighborhoods with low expectations for informal social control experience more crime, higher levels of disorder, and adolescent anti-social behavior (Bursik & Webb, 1982; Mazerolle, Wickes, & McBroom, 2010; Sampson & Groves, 1989; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). We also know that police have a particular stake in the informal social control activities of community residents and can significantly impact the level of crime in a given neighborhood (Sargeant, Wickes, & Mazerolle, 2013). Further, police are reliant on neighborhood residents to formally report crime and disorder and informally intervene, where reasonable, to resolve local problems (Grinc, 1994; Tyler, 2004). Recent research also shows that police effectiveness may be particularly important for generating a collective action orientation among local residents (Sargeant et al., 2013; see also Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003; Silver & Miller, 2004). When police effectively control crime and respond to community problems and calls for service, residents are more willing to intervene to solve neighborhood problems or report problems to the police (Kääriäinen & Sirén, 2011; Sargeant et al., 2013; Silver & Miller, 2004; Warner, 2007). Much less is known, however, about the way neighborhood contexts shape attitudes toward formal authorities and the willingness of residents to engage with police to solve local problems.

One of the keys to the puzzle is the role of police legitimacy (Tyler, 2006) and how police establish trust and shared norms that are important for intervention, which may lead to lower levels of crime and disorder (Kochel, 2012; LaFree, 1998; Sargeant et al., 2013; Sun, Triplett, & Gainey, 2004). In addition, the interaction between the neighborhood context and policing strategies may lead to heightened or reduced crime. Strategies that enhance police–resident problem-solving may in turn develop the strong relationships necessary for the prevention of neighborhood problems (Renauer, 2007; Sargeant et al., 2013). In contrast, police raids, crackdowns, and minority targeting or profiling by the police can break down trust and cooperation, which could increase crime rates (Gau & Brunson, 2010; Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003; Sargeant et al., 2013).

In this special issue, we bring together a collection of five scholarly papers that contribute to building a better understanding of the role of police and police legitimacy in the community context. Drawing together scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan, this issue offers an international perspective on the neighborhood dynamics that influence attitudes toward police and shape perceptions of police legitimacy. In the lead article, Jacinta Gau and Rod Brunson draw on in-depth interviews with 45 young men residing in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods to explore the actions of police that erode legitimacy. They find that many of the young men expressed disillusionment and disaffection, where they doubted the capacity (or willingness) of police to help protect them. The second paper, by Antrobus, Bradford, Murphy, and Sargeant, highlights the key mechanisms that link community norms and perceptions of police legitimacy. They find that people feel a greater duty to obey the police when they have established links to community groups and live in neighborhoods where fellow residents view the police as legitimate.

The Rodney King incident in 1991 (see Skolnick & Fyfe, 1993) is a well-known flashpoint that underscores the role of police legitimacy in shaping a willingness to obey police in the context of traffic policing. In the third special issue paper by Bradford, Hohl, Jackson, and MacQueen, the authors draw on a Scottish experiment to explore the role of social identity to better understand why people comply (or not) with traffic laws and regulations. They find that social identity is a bridge linking procedural fairness and compliance. Digging deeper, Terrill and Paoline (fourth article) find that patrol officers with negative orientations toward top management and who view the police role as “crime fighters” are more likely to generate discourtesy, force, and more citizen complaints. Our final contribution from Japan (Tsushima and Hamai) suggests that the patterns of police legitimacy found in Western democracies are not neatly transferable to countries like Japan. Tsushima and Hamai argue that the lack of “civic individualism” in Japan is likely to alter how people in Japan perceive police. Overall, this scholarly collection provides international insight into various aspects of the police legitimacy puzzle in the context of geographical communities. It contributes, we hope, to the unfolding story of how best to police different communities, in different countries and across different modes of policing.