Global and specific attitudes toward the police: Disentangling the relationship
Abstract
Since the 1960s, a substantial body of research has focused on citizens' attitudes toward the police. These studies tap a rather wide variety of outlooks: some ask about specific assessments of the police (e.g., satisfaction with the police in particular incidents), while others ask about more global assessments (e.g., satisfaction with the police in general, police in the community, or police in the neighborhood). Using data obtained through a panel survey of 398 residents of a large midwestern city, we compare specific assessments of police performance with more global attitudes toward the police. We also examine the effects of global and specific attitudes on one another. The results show that the two measures produce similar levels of support for the police. The results reveal further that global attitudes have substantial effects on specific assessments of police performance, and that the effects of specific assessments of police performance on global attitudes are modest by comparison.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Attitudes toward the police correlate with citizens' subjective experiences with the police in individual contacts, both voluntary contacts and involuntary contacts.
“Attitudes toward the police also correlate with citizens' subjective experiences with the police in individual contacts, both voluntary contacts—when citizens report crimes or request assistance—and involuntary contacts—when they are stopped by the police.”
From Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy (2017) · cites this paper as Brandl et al. 1994
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 25 · Cited by 347
- Authors
- Brandl, S. G., Frank, J., Worden, R. E., & Bynum, T. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (US)
- University of Cincinnati (US)
- University at Albany, State University of New York (US)
- Michigan State University (US)
- ORCID
- Worden, Robert E.
- Venue
- Justice Quarterly
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1994-03
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 119-134
- ISSN
- 0741-8825 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-9109
- OpenAlex
- W2053515586
- Cited by
- 347
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 25.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Justice Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Keywords
- attitudes toward police, police satisfaction, police performance, police-community relations, police support, neighbourhood policing, police-citizen relations
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
