An Exploratory Comparison of Policing Views Between Indian and U.S. College Students

Abstract

While there is a large amount of research on public attitudes toward the police, far fewer studies have examined citizen’s views of the police in non-Western nations. Even less is known regarding Indian citizens’ perceptions of the police. Based on survey data collected from over 900 college students, this exploratory study compared and contrasted college students’ views of policing in India and the United States. The results uncovered both intranational and international differences in three areas of views of the police, including general satisfaction with the police, support for aggressive policing, and support for community policing. Indian students in general were less satisfied with the performance of the police; yet, more supportive of both aggressive policing and community policing than their U.S. counterparts. Perceptions of the police varied somewhat by gender, age, and academic level.

Keywords

perceptions of police India United States college students

The general public’s views of the police can influence the amount and type of interaction people have with the police, the degree of support they provide to the police, the degree of legitimacy they perceive about the police, police–community relations, and policing policies and practices in a nation (Cao & Dai, 2006; Sharma, 2006). Positive views can help foster a positive relationship between the police and the public, enhancing police effectiveness (Brown & Benedict, 2002). Negative views not only hamper the effectiveness of the police and the trust of the public in them but also lead to perceptions that the police are a tool of an oppressive government, unconcerned with the wants and needs of its citizens (Goldsmith, 2005; Nalla & Madan, 2011). Undoubtedly, studying people’s views of the police is warranted.

While there is a growing body of literature on public perceptions of the police, the vast majority of these studies have focused on Western nations, particularly the United States (Brown, Benedict, & Wilkinson, 2006; Cao & Dai, 2006; O’Connor, 2008). Far fewer studies have been published in Western journals on citizen’s views of the police in non-Western nations (Cao & Burton, 2006). The scarcity of cross-national research on policing views limits the understanding of police–public relationships and how they differ across nations. Khan and Unnithan (2009) argued that limiting research on criminal justice issues to Western, developed nations leads to a myopic world view of insularity and ethnocentrism. They further pointed out that such a narrow focus of criminal justice research ignores the majority of people on the planet. Cross-national research thus can help narrow the gap between different nations and create bridges where information flows more freely (Cao & Cullen, 2001). “The importance and utility to social science of rigorous cross-national measures is incontestable. They help to reveal not only intriguing differences between countries and cultures, but also aspects of one’s own country and culture that would be difficult or impossible to detect from domestic data alone” (Jowell, 1998, p. 168). To contribute to cross-cultural research on attitudes toward the police, this study takes the initiative in comparing and contrasting the views of college students from the Republic of India (henceforth, India) and the United States of America (henceforth, the U.S.).

India is the most populous democratic country in the world with approximately 1.2 billion citizens. It has a dynamic and growing economy and is a major trading partner with Western nations, particularly the U.S. (United Nations, 2008; U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2009; World Factbook, 2011). A few contrasting features between India and the U.S. make the latter a good reference to study the former. Both India and the U.S. are former British colonies, yet India has been an independent nation far shorter than the U.S. Both are currently federal republics with democratically elected executives, bicameral legislatures, and Supreme Courts, yet India significantly lags behind the U.S. in its modernization process. In addition, India is a developing country while the U.S. is a developed country. Although the police can help ensure stability in a developing nation and assist in a smooth transition of economic development, the police can also be more corrupt and harsher than their counterparts in developed countries (Salifu, 2008), and this is the case for India. These and other differences, such as varied degrees of decentralization of the police institution and dissimilar levels of police professionalism, responsiveness, efficiency, and integrity, probably result in differential public views of the police in the two nations (Raghavan, 2003).

This study was exploratory in nature with limited financial resources and difficulty in accessing the general population in India; therefore, the researchers surveyed a total of 434 Indian and 484 U.S. college students. Specifically, this study examines three areas of policing views: students’ general satisfaction with the police, specific support for aggressive policing, and specific support for community policing. It also investigates whether or not there is significant cross-country variation in perceptions of the police after controlling for individual characteristics of age, gender, and academic level.

College students represent the values of future democracy, and college enrollment has increased substantially during the past decades in both countries. It is important to recognize that college students are, to a certain extent, different from the rest of the general population. College students tend to be young, freedom-oriented, and more liberal, and thus may be more cynical and less trustful of the police (Williams & Nofziger, 2003). Conversely, college students usually also represent the highest socioeconomic status groups in a society, especially so in India, and as such, may have more favorable attitudes toward the police as they see the police as the protector of their interests and the status quo. Further, they are more likely to live in communities where the police are more professional, leading to more positive views of the police.

Literature Review

Policing views often differ across nations even when controlling for personal characteristics, such as age, gender, and educational level. While research on policing views in the U.S. is plentiful, research on public perceptions in India is extremely limited. This section starts with an overview of India and the Indian police, then it summarizes the existing empirical evidence on Indian attitudes toward the police, and, finally, it describes the research objectives of the present study.

Overview of India and Indian Police

India is a nation in south Asia with a rich and long history dating back thousands of years. India became a modern parliamentary democratic nation in 1947, when it gained its independence from Great Britain. India has a vibrant and rapidly growing market-based economy, estimated to be the sixth largest in the world. While its landmass is one third the size of the U.S., its population is almost 4 times as large (Unnithan, 2009; World Factbook, 2011). India is a pluralistic society consisting of various ethnic and religious groups. About 70% of the population belongs to the Indo-Aryan ethnic group. The majority of Indian citizens are Hindu (80%), and 11% are Muslim, 2% Christian, 2% Sikh, and 5% belong to other religious denominations. About a third of Indian citizens live in urban areas and more than half work in agriculture. The Indian population is young, with about 30% under 15 years of age and a median age of approximately 25 (Geographia, 2011; Khan & Unnithan, 2009; World Factbook, 2011). The government and the legal system of today’s India are heavily influenced by its past as a British colony.

Policing has a long history in India. The role of the police arose out of the need to maintain order by feudal lords. The Arthashastra, a fourth-century Before the Common Era (BCE) Hindu writing on government matters, advocated that the ruler was responsible for crime control and maintained order through the use of village headmen who were paid by the king. The village headman’s role was to be the police officer for the local community. The Manusmriti, known as the Laws of Manu, indicated that village headman would punish offenders and restore goods taken by thieves. In the 16th-century Common Era (CE), under Mogul rule, a more centralized law enforcement system was put into place in cities by instituting the position of Kotwal, which can be thought of as chiefs of police and security personnel, while the village headmen continued to be responsible for dealing with crime and maintaining peace in rural areas (Kerala Police History and Archives, 2011; Singh, 2002). At the end of the Mogul Empire, the system of justice began to collapse. In the 1700s, the East India Company began to move into India and took control, including crime control. The main goal of the law enforcement efforts of the East India Company was not protecting people from crime but protecting profits of the company (Das & Verma, 1998; Singh, 2002).

The first uniformed police in India were created in 1792 during British rule by Charles Cornwallis, the first Governor General of India. Police officers reported to the central government, and police were to arrest individuals suspected of crimes and deliver them to a magistrate within 24 hour of being taken into custody. Lord Cornwallis required that officers be paid well in order to cut down on corrupt and abusive practices. Lord Minto, the next Governor General of India, created the position Superintendent of Police (Singh, 2002). After the first war for independence in 1857, the British saw a need to modernize and nationalize the police in India. The British instituted Western-style policing in India with the passage of the Indian Police Act of 1861. The job of the police was to keep order, prevent crime, enforce the law, and engage in surveillance of citizens (Raghavan & Shiva Sankar, 2003; Scott, Evans, & Verma, 2009). The British used the police to deal harshly with those seeking independence or protesting against British rule. A year after independence in 1947, the Indian (Imperial) Police were renamed the Indian Police Services, which remains the policing agency in India today (Shah, 1999).

The Indian Police have a national headquarters and are stationed in all 28 states. Each state has its own Director General and is divided into districts, with a police force under the direction of a Superintendent of Police in each district. Districts are then divided into subdistricts, and subdistricts are broken down into police circles. Within police circles are police stations. Larger cities operate a metropolitan police force, answering to a Director General (Raghavan, 1999; Raghavan & Shiva Sankar, 2003; Verma & Gavirneni, 2006). Although the Indian Police are controlled at a national level, state governments have some control through the hiring and training of middle- and lower level officers. The Indian central government appoints all senior-level/high-level police posts. All senior-level command officers must be college graduates, pass a civil service exam, and meet national training requirements (Khan & Unnithan, 2008; Shah, 1999; Singh, 2002; Verma & Gavirneni, 2006).

While the number of police per capita has increased since India became an independent nation (approximately 130 officers per 100,000 citizens), it is lower than the U.S. (233 per 100,000; NationMaster, 2011). In urban areas, police work is broken down into areas of crime investigation, order maintenance and patrol, and traffic. Serious crimes are handled by the Criminal Investigation Department, which also investigates police misconduct. Allegations of police corruption are investigated by an anticorruption bureau. While the bureau is outside the police force, it is manned by police officers and is responsible for investigating claims of corruption by any government employee (Raghavan, 1999).

The police are the most visible and powerful part of the criminal justice system in India (Unnithan, 2010; Verma, 1999). In recent years, the police have been subject to more performance pressure. Crime rates increased in India in the 1990s, yet the clearance rates by the police dropped during the same time (Sen, 2000). The murder rate in India, although lower than the U.S. rate, is higher than in most European countries (Barclay & Tavares, 2003; Langan & Farrington, 1998; National Crime Records Bureau, 2008). There is increasing pressure for the police to not only clear crimes but also to deter them as well. Additionally, terrorism is a growing problem in India; terrorist attacks over the past several decades have changed the Indian police (Gordon, 2008; Sen, 2000). A greater demand for intelligence and control has led to an increase in specialized police agencies (Dhillon, 2005).

Public–community relations in India are generally strained. As the current police trace their roots back to the colonial control and the Police Act of 1861, people still believe that the police are to protect the government rather than serve the public (Das & Verma, 1998; Nalla & Madan, 2011). There has been a considerable amount written about police lack of accountability. Dhillon (2005) contended that “Indian policemen are state servants, not public servants. As such, there is no concept of direct accountability” (p. 38). Nalla and Madan (2011, p. 5) noted that the Indian police have “a primary operational philosophy of serving government interests at the cost of negligence of human rights, at times.” The police are heavily influenced by politics, and top police officials owe their allegiance more to political parties than to the public (Dhillon, 2005).

Brutality and corruption are pervasive among the Indian police. Verma (1999) contended that “corruption exists within every rank, from constable to the chief of police” (p. 264). Dhillon (2005, p. 74) wrote that “Indian police are probably the most reviled government agency in India. Ordinary Indians consider brutality and corruption its most familiar features.” Bribes and extortion of victims and offenders is common among officers (Verma, 1999). Raghavan (1999) wrote that “it is widely known in India that many personnel at police stations demand money from crime victims, especially those who have been the subject of theft, robbery or burglary, for registering their complaints and proceeding further with the investigation” (p. 260).

Vincentnathan and Vincentnathan (2009) concluded that police corruption and brutality have caused citizens to suspect and fear the police, reducing public trust. Additionally, there are allegations of gender and religious bias by the police. Complaints by women are often not taken as seriously by the police as complaints by men (Kethineni & Srinivasan, 2009; Sen, 2000). According to Raghavan and Shiva Sankar (2003), there is a fragile relationship between Hindu and Muslim citizens, which has been pockmarked by deadly clashes over the years. The police have been criticized for allowing the deadly clashes to occur and for not ending them quickly, as well as playing favorites in the religious violence.

Some reforms are underway to improve police–community relations in India. Traditionally, there has been little civilian accountability of the police or input in policing by the local community (Dhillon, 2005; Verma, 1999). Community policing is just beginning to be introduced in a few urban areas (Vincentnathan & Vincentnathan, 2009). There have been recent efforts to increase the bond between the police and community residents (Dhillon, 2005; Sharma, 2006). Strategies are introduced to increase police responsiveness to the community, such as setting up neighborhood watches and hosting community meetings (Nalla & Madan, 2011; Raghavan, 1999). There have been some regional community-oriented initiatives, such as the special police officer program and neighborhood watch program in New Delhi, the Mohalla Committees of Maharashtra, the Tamil Nadu program, and the Friends of the Police program in Tamil Nadu (Raghavan & Shiva Sankar, 2003). Raghavan and Shiva Sankar (2003), however, described these and other efforts to create a police/community partnership as modest.

Empirical Evidence on Indian Perceptions of the Police

Empirical research on Indian attitudes toward the police has been extremely scant. The few surveys that do exist have indicated that the public commonly view the police as corrupt and not responsive to people’s needs (Raghavan, 1999). An early survey conducted by the Bararas Hindu University found the police had a poor public image. Those who had contacts with the police had more positive attitudes than those with no direct contact (cited by Diaz, 1989). Another early study conducted by the National Police Commission recorded that 82% of the participants thought that “the police did not discharge their duties in a straight-forward manner,” and negative attitudes were held especially toward officers of lower ranks (citied by Diaz, 1989, p. 43). Based on a sample of 270 residents in Madras (now Chennai), Diaz (1989) found that women and young people had lower expectations for the police yet viewed the police more favorably than men and older people. People who had prior satisfactory interaction with the police also had more positive views of the police compared to those who had no contact or negative prior interactions.

Sharma (2006) empirically evaluated the strategies and practices of the Delhi police. Among the 400 citizens involved in the study, many, especially the poor, believed the police were unreliable, unfair, and corrupt, and did not think that there really could be closer relations between the police and the public. Nalla and Madan (2011) recently conducted an investigation on public views of police cooperation in India. They found that people who are generally satisfied with the police, who consider the police as fair, and who feel safer in the community, are more likely to perceive that the police and public have worked together in solving crime problems and protecting the public. The study also depicted quite negative views of police civility, fairness, and integrity among Indian citizens. For example, less than one third of the respondents thought that the police are helpful or polite, and 70–85% of the participants agreed with various statements that described the police as corrupt and unfair.

Research Objectives

Although India is the second most populous in the world and an emerging nation with international influence, empirical research on Indian views of the police is sporadic and descriptive in nature. This study aims to contribute to the literature by comparing and contrasting public attitudes toward the police in India and the U.S. There were two research objectives for this exploratory study. The first was to document the views of Indian and U.S. respondents on police performance, aggressive policing, and community policing. The second was to investigate whether or not public perceptions of the police in India and the U.S. remain different after controlling for individual demographic characteristics of gender, age, and educational level.

Methodology

Sample

A convenience sample of students at an Indian university and a U.S. university were surveyed. The Indian university was a large metropolitan public university in southern India (i.e., the state of Andhra Pradesh) which offered undergraduate, master, and terminal degrees. Its enrollment at the time of the survey was about 100,000 students. The U.S. university was a public institution located in the Midwest of the U.S., which offered undergraduate, master, and terminal degrees. Its enrollment at the time of the survey was approximately 20,000. At both academic institutions, the survey, which was completed during class time, was first explained to the students, and it was emphasized both verbally and in writing that the survey was voluntary and the results would be anonymous. In order to avoid duplication, students were asked not to complete the survey if they had done so in another class.

At the Indian university, the surveys were administered in 20 undergraduate classes, and the included classes were required by a wide range of majors. The survey was written in English; although English was not necessarily the native language of the respondents, it was the language spoken at the university. Faculty selected which classes to survey with the criteria that selected classes should have a mixture of students from different majors and an instructor who would grant permission to survey the class. The survey was administered by a faculty member or graduate student who passed out and collected the surveys, which took about 15–20 min to complete. The surveys were returned to the U.S. and were entered into a database for analysis. At the U.S. university, classes selected were general education courses that were required by a wide array of majors at the university. Permission was secured from 18 of the instructors of the 20 selected classes (i.e., two instructors declined, which resulted in 18 classes being administered the survey). The U.S. survey was also written in English. The 18 classes were divided between two faculty members who passed out and collected the surveys. The responses of the surveys were entered into a database by graduate assistants. Data from both countries were checked and cleaned.

A total of 918 surveys were used in the current study. A total of 434 surveys were returned from the Indian students. Among the participants, 43% were women and 57% were men. The age of the respondents ranged from 18 to 47, and the median age was 20. The average age was 20.99, with a standard deviation of 3.42. In terms of academic level, 65% were in the first 2 years of college, with 43% being in the first year, and 35% were in the third (26%) or fourth (8%) year (many Indian undergraduate programs are only 3 years long but some are 4 years). A total of 484 surveys were returned by the U.S. students, among whom 56% were women and 44% were men. The age of the respondents ranged from 18 to 63, with a median age of 21. The average age was 21.96, with a standard deviation of 5.38. In terms of academic level, 39% were lower level (i.e., 19% were freshmen and 20% were sophomores) and 61% were upper-level students (i.e., 33% were juniors and 28% were seniors). The Indian students were more likely to be male, younger, and lower level students compared to the U.S. students.

Measures

The respondents were asked to respond to a series of Likert items reflecting their views on the police. These items are presented in Table 1. All questions were answered using a 5-point response scale ranging from strongly disagree (coded as 1) to strongly agree (coded as 5). Rather than measuring simply confidence in the police or if the police were seen as being effective in dealing with crime, broader views of the police were sought. Most of the policing items, therefore, were created for this study. These items were developed from reading the empirical literature on international studies of people’s views of the police, taking into account the special situation of India and the Indian police. Before the surveys were administered, the questions were pilot tested with a small group of students and faculty to help ensure the clarity of the measures.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of Items Measuring Policing Views Between Indian and U.S. Respondents (N = 918)

	Indian (n = 434)						United States (n = 484)
	SD	D	U	A	SA	Mean (SDev)	SD	D	U	A	SA	Mean (SDev)	t Value
Satisfaction with police (α = .81)						19.53 (5.29)						20.45 (5.46)	2.55^**
Police know what is best for my community	13	26	24	27	10	2.93 (1.20)	17	32	32	15	4	2.58 (1.07)	−4.65^**
Police know what is best for people	14	32	22	25	7	2.79 (1.17)	13	35	34	16	1	2.57 (0.96)	−3.16^**
Police know how to best respond to crime	5	23	20	41	10	3.28 (1.09)	6	24	30	36	4	3.10 (0.99)	−2.56^**
I trust the police	15	23	21	27	14	3.01 (1.29)	9	13	22	45	12	3.37 (1.12)	4.54^**
Police are generally friendly	19	40	16	20	5	2.53 (1.15)	5	18	21	52	4	3.32 (0.98)	11.21^**
Police generally treat everyone the same in my community	31	32	12	15	10	2.41 (1.33)	28	36	18	15	3	2.31 (1.12)	−1.34
Police in my community work hard	20	29	24	20	8	2.66 (1.22)	4	19	35	36	7	3.22 (0.96)	7.63^**
Support for aggressive policing (α = .61)						11.06 (4.14)						8.30 (2.21)	−12.71^**
Excessive police scrutiny is necessary to fight crime	1	12	15	44	27	4.07 (1.56)	7	36	40	16	1	2.69 (0.87)	−8.25^**
Frequent stops by the police in the community are necessary to reduce crime	2	14	23	43	18	3.59 (1.01)	10	22	22	39	6	3.10 (1.12)	−6.91^**
Support for community policing (α = .70)						19.80 (2.84)						18.90 (2.33)	−5.14^**
Cooperation between the police and the community is important to prevent crime	1	5	2	36	56	4.41 (0.85)	1	4	7	56	33	4.16 (0.77)	−4.56^**
To prevent crime, there must be a partnership between the community and the police	3	6	8	48	35	4.06 (0.96)	1	8	12	66	14	3.84 (0.79)	−3.85^**
Police working with neighborhoods or communities is an effective deterrent to crime	2	13	18	46	21	3.70 (1.00)	1	7	27	59	6	3.61 (0.75)	−1.51
The flow of information from citizens to police about crime and criminals increases police effectiveness at crime prevention	2	8	16	56	19	3.83 (0.88)	2	4	25	59	10	3.70 (0.78)	−2.41^*
The flow of police information about crime back to citizens improves the ability of citizens to protect themselves	2	6	19	53	20	3.82 (0.90)	1	6	28	62	3	3.59 (0.70)	−4.22^**

Note. A = agree; D = disagree; SA = strongly agree; SD = strongly disagree; U = uncertain.

SDev = standard deviation.

Percentages may not equal 100% due to rounding.

α refers to Cronbach’s α, a measure of internal reliability. The independent t test was used, and the degrees of freedom ranged from 878 to 916.

*p ≤ .05.

**p ≤ .01.

Three additive scales were formed based on these items, measuring public satisfaction with the police, support for aggressive policing, and support for community policing, respectively. Satisfaction with the police was gauged using 7 items (Cronbach’s α = .81). Respondents were asked to what degree they agreed that “Police know what is best for my community,” “Police know what is best for people,” “Police know how to best respond to crime,” “I trust the police,” “Police are generally friendly,” “Police generally treat everyone the same in my community,” and “Police in my community work hard.” Support for aggressive policing was measured using 2 items (Cronbach’s α = .61): “Excessive police scrutiny is necessary to fight crime,” and “Frequent stops by the police in the community is necessary to reduce crime.” Five items were used to indicate support for community policing (Cronbach’s α = .70): “Cooperation between the police and the community is important to prevent crime,” “In order to prevent crime, there must be a partnership between the community and the police,” “Police working with neighborhoods or communities is an effective deterrent to crime,” “The flow of information from citizens to police about crime and criminals increases police effectiveness at crime prevention,” and “The flow of police information about crime back to citizens improves the ability of citizens to protect themselves.” The policing items were entered into factor analysis and the items loaded onto the predicted factors. The factor loading scores for the 7 items used to create the general satisfaction with police variable ranged from .51 to .75. The factor loading scores for the 2 items used to create the support for aggressive policing index were .76 and .78. The factor loading scores for the items used for the support for community policing measure ranged from .55 to .69.

The independent variables included personal characteristics of gender, age, academic level, and nationality. Gender was measured as a dichotomous variable representing whether the respondent was a woman (coded as 0) or a man (coded as 1). Age was measured in continuous years. Academic level was a dichotomous variable indicating if the student was lower level (first or second year in college) or upper level (third or fourth year in college). Nationality of the respondent was coded as 0 = U.S. and 1 = India.

Results

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for the 14 Likert-type items indicating views of the police and policing. In general, the Indian students had lower levels of satisfaction with the police than the U.S. students. Although Indian respondents were more likely to agree that the police know what is best for people, what is best for the community, and how to best respond to crime, they had much lower levels of trust in the police than U.S. students. In addition, Indian students were less likely than their U.S. counterparts to think that the police are generally friendly and that police in their community work hard. The two groups did not differ significantly in their perceptions of police fairness—approximately 63% of the respondents in each country disagreed with the statement that police generally treat everyone the same in their community.

With respect to attitudes toward aggressive policing, Indian respondents appeared more supportive than U.S. respondents. A majority of the Indian respondents (71%) thought that excessive police scrutiny is necessary to fight crime, compared to only 17% of the U.S. respondents. Similarly, 61% of the Indian respondents believed that frequent stops by the police in the community are necessary to reduce crime, compared to only 45% of the U.S. respondents who thought so.

In regard to community policing ideologies and strategies, both Indian and U.S. respondents reported very favorable attitudes, with the Indian respondents showing higher levels of support. Approximately 90% of the respondents in each country thought that the cooperation between the police and the community is important in preventing crime. About 80% of the respondents in each nation believed that to prevent crime, there must be a partnership between the community and the police. Slightly over 65% of the respondents in both countries thought that police working with neighborhoods is an effective deterrent to crime, and that the flow of information from citizens to police about crime and criminals increases police effectiveness at crime prevention. Respectively, 73% and 65% of the respondents in India and the U.S. believed that the flow of police information about crime back to the citizens improves the self-protecting ability of the citizens.

Results from the independent t tests revealed that significant variation exists between the two groups in all items, except for 2 items (i.e., police treat people equally in the community and policing working with neighborhoods is an effective deterrent to crime). The Indian and U.S. respondents were equally negative in their beliefs that the police did not treat everyone the same in the community. Both groups also equally supported the idea that police working with neighborhoods or communities was an effective deterrent to crime. In general, Indian respondents were less satisfied with the performance of the police and more supportive of aggressive policing and community policing than the U.S. respondents.

Table 2 reports the results of multivariate regression analysis on college students’ perceptions of the police in the U.S. and India. The variance of inflation factor scores ranged between 1.02 to 1.16 and the tolerance values ranged from .86 to .98, which indicated no problem of multicollinearity. Results showed that nationality was a statistically significant predictor for all three attitudinal aspects after controlling for the shared effects of gender, age, and academic level. Thus, Indian respondents persistently had lower degrees of satisfaction with the performance of the police but meanwhile higher levels of support for aggressive policing and community policing than U.S. respondents, after holding all other variables constant.

Table 2.

Regression Results for Policing View Between Indian and U.S. Respondents (N = 918)

Variable	Satisfaction With Police	Support for Aggressive Policing	Support for Community Policing
Gender	.20^**	.06^*	−.04
Age	−.09^**	−.06^*	.12^**
Academic level	.10	−.01	.09
Nation	−.16^**	.37^**	.22^**
R ²	.17^**	.16^**	.06^**

Note. Standardized regression coefficients are reported. Gender was coded as 0 = females 1 = males. Age was measured in continuous years. Academic level was coded as lower level = 0 (first 2 years in college) and upper level = 1 (third or higher years in college). Nation was coded as 0 = U.S. and 1 = India. See Table 1 for the specific items used to create each of the indexes of satisfaction with police, support for aggressive policing, and support for community policing. The number of Indian respondents was 434 and the number of U.S. respondents was 484.

*p ≤ .05.

**p ≤ .01.

Gender was a significant predictor in two attitude areas. Men tended to have greater satisfaction with police and stronger support for aggressive policing. Men and women did not vary significantly on their support for community policing. Age was also a significant predictor in two attitude areas. It was negatively related to people’s general satisfaction with the police and positively associated with their support for community policing. Thus, older persons expressed less favorable opinions about police performance and more supportive opinions toward the philosophies and practices of community policing. Finally, academic level in college had a positive relationship with students’ satisfaction with the police. The R ² values associated with these three models indicated that the independent variables together explained respondents’ general satisfaction with the police and support for aggressive policing better than support for community policing.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study found both intranational and international differences in policing views between Indian and the U.S. college students. After controlling for individual characteristics, Indian respondents were less satisfied with the police yet more supportive of aggressive policing and community policing. The lower levels of general satisfaction among the Indian students were expected. The police in India, based upon how they are portrayed in the literature and the media, suffer from a legitimacy crisis due to long-lasting problems of nonresponsiveness, bias, brutality, and corruption (Dhillon, 2005; Nalla & Madan, 2011; Raghavan, 1999; Singh, 2002).

Results revealed that Indian students were particularly unsatisfied with police demeanor (i.e., being friendly), work ethic (i.e., working hard), and fairness (i.e., treating everyone in the same manner). Indian respondents had significantly lower levels of trust in the police compared to U.S. respondents as well. Corruption may be the foremost factor accounting for Indian respondents’ low trust in the police. Corruption within public institutions sends a message that “democracy’s tenets of procedural and distributive fairness [are] a myth” (Anderson & Tverdova, 2003, p. 92). Prior research has found that institutional corruption is a significant indicator of citizens’ trust in the government and the police (Seligson, 2002; Wu & Sun, 2009). Because the respondents were not asked whether they felt the police were corrupt or abusive in this study, these issues need to be explored in future research.

In contrast, the majority of the U.S. respondents considered the police generally friendly and trustworthy. This may be attributed to the professionalism and community policing models that the U.S. police have adopted in the past century (Walker, 1977). Both models require the police to act friendly, and be respectful and responsive in dealing with the public. Recent research on procedural justice and public satisfaction suggest positive outcomes result when officers improve their demeanor when interacting with citizens. These progressive measures may account for the public’s satisfaction with officer demeanor. In addition, corruption is much less pervasive and less serious a problem in the U.S. According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, India scored 3.3 on a scale from 0 “highly corrupt” to 10 “highly clean,” ranking 87th of the 178 nations, and the U.S. scored 7.1 on the scale, ranking 22nd (Transparency International, 2011). Thus, although the U.S. police are not immune from corruption, the results of this study suggest that the public still holds the belief that most of the police officers are honest and trustworthy.

What is perplexing is the finding regarding Indian respondents’ greater confidence in police knowledge and capability. Indian respondents had stronger beliefs that the police know what is best for the community, what is best for the people, and how to respond to crime. Although between 28% and 46% of the Indian respondents did not agree that the police know what is best for the community, people, and crime control, it must be noted that these percentages are much smaller than those for the U.S. respondents. It is possible that the Indian students held more onto the traditional view that the police are the most qualified, or even the sole, crime fighters than their U.S. counterparts, who realize the limitation of the police as the crime-fighters with the popularization of community policing ideologies; however, this is an unsupported postulation. It is also possible that a viewpoint that the police know how to best respond to crime yet the police not doing so may generate disappointment and mistrust of the police by the public. This is an unsupported postulation as well. Both postulations need to be investigated by future research.

It was interesting to observe that the Indian participants were more supportive of aggressive policing than the U.S. participants. In a nation that emphasizes crime control instead of due process, Indian respondents are likely to be less aware of or cautious about the potential danger of aggressive policing practices. In the U.S., college students may be more sensitive to the protection of human rights and due process and, accordingly, more wary that excessive police scrutiny and frequent stops may infringe on citizens’ constitutional rights and increase police harassment on less powerful groups of the society. In addition, Indian respondents may have a stronger tendency than their U.S. counterparts to attribute the crime problem to a lack of action by the police and, therefore, believe that intensified law enforcement is, by default, necessary to reduce crime.

It was also interesting to observe that Indian students supported the ideas of community policing more than the U.S. students. It should be noted that the term “community policing” was not used in our survey items. We described the broad and general philosophies and practices of community policing without specifying any particular programs or activities. Thus, the public may be less enthusiastic when it comes to individual elements of community policing, such as the decentralization of police operations, or a program that requires citizens to spend more time and resources to participate in crime control and prevention.

That being said, results of this study do show that public support for community policing is lower in the U.S., a nation where community policing has been a common theme during the past two decades, than in India where community policing has just been introduced. This finding is similar to Miller and Hess (2008), who found that Indian students were more supportive of community policing than the U.S. students. On one hand, it seems that with the past two decades of experimentation with community policing, the U.S. students have largely realized that this new policing strategy was not necessarily a silver bullet to cure all crime problems. On the other hand, the Indian students may be more optimistic that the police will become more responsive and accountable to community needs with the implementation of community policing strategy. It is also possible that the various community policing initiatives and outreach programs in different states of India during the past few years have enhanced police visibility and promoted public awareness of the benefits of establishing a partnership between the police and the community.

Finally, this study revealed some gender and age effects on college students’ policing views. Specifically, results indicated that men are more likely to evaluate the police positively and support aggressive policing than women. Additional analysis investigating the effects of gender on individual items of policing views revealed that men have greater confidence in police knowledge, higher trust in the police, and more favorable evaluations of police friendliness and diligence. These results indirectly support the gender bias allegation that the Indian police treat men better than women (Kethineni & Srinivasan, 2009; Sen, 2000).

As with much research, the current study had shortcomings. This was an exploratory study using a convenience sample of college students. As such, the results need to be interpreted with great caution and cannot be generalized to the entire population or even other universities. It is possible that the views of college students differ from the general population. There has been too little research to date to suggest that Indian college students’ policing views are similar or different from that of the general public. Far more studies, preferably based on random samples of citizens, are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn. Furthermore, some of the items used here to measure views of the police are exploratory and need to be tested in other studies. Additional measures of policing views should also be used in future studies. For example, asking the degree of confidence in the police and how well a person thought the police did in controlling crime would allow for comparisons with past studies. Even though the items loaded on a single factor, the Cronbach’s α value of .61 for the index measuring support for aggressive policing was low. This may be due to the fact that there were only 2 items that made up the index, and indexes with fewer items tend to have lower reliability values (Pallant, 2001). Future studies should explore new measures for support for aggressive policing, including using more items to measure this concept.

Due to data constraints, this study failed to include a number of theoretically relevant predictor variables to explain attitudes toward the police. For example, an important variable to be examined by future research is past experience with the police. Literature in Western nations has reported that prior positive police contact generally is associated with more favorable views of the police and prior negative contact is related with negative views of the police (Brown & Benedict, 2002). Future research should also control another potentially important variable—the race/ethnicity/caste status of the respondent. Racial and ethnic status has been widely found to influence criminal justice views, especially among U.S. residents (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2000). Additionally, other personal information, such as religious views, religious denomination, socioeconomic status, past victimization, and so on should be examined in future to see how they are associated with views of the police. While it is interesting to compare the views of one nation to another, there is no fixed theoretical reason for which nations to compare. It would be interesting to analyze the similarities and differences between Indian and British residents or U.S. and British residents, in light that both were former colonies of Great Britain. In addition, there were several untested explanations presented for the findings. These explanations need to be empirically tested.

In closing, this exploratory study examined the views of different policing areas using survey data from college students in India and the U.S. Even after controlling for the personal characteristics of gender, age, and educational level, the findings indicate that there were differences in views based on the nationality of the respondents. This suggests that policing views do vary between different nations, probably as the result of broader social, cultural, and institutional forces and values. Nevertheless, the findings are far from conclusive and raise more questions than they answer. Much more cross-national research on public attitudes toward the police is needed. Such research cannot only lead to knowledge about policing views in other nations but also result in a better, clear, critical understanding of views of the police in one’s own nation (Khan & Unnithan, 2009). Angel and Thoits (1987) pointed out that views and attitudes of different groups are windows to the salient values of the particular group. It is hoped that this study will spur further research on views of the police not only in India and the U.S., but across a wide array of countries.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Yuning Wu and Eric Lambert are co-first authors of this article. The authors thank Janet Lambert for editing and proofreading the article. The authors also thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which improved the article.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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