Citizen Satisfaction with Police Encounters

“…contacts finds that fair and courteous treatment, giving people reasons for stopping them, and explaining their rights, all contribute to satisfaction with encounters (Skogan, 2004; Bland et al., 2000; Bucke, 1997; Quinton et al., 2000; Reisig & Chandek, 2001; Stone & Pettigrew, 2000).”

“…decisions can be affected by a suspect’s race and/or social standing (Alpert, Dunham, & MacDonald, 2004; Mastrofski, Reisig, & McCluskey, 2002; Skogan, 2005), gender (Brunson & Miller, 2006a), demeanor (Engel, Sobol, & Worden, 2000; Klinger, 1996; Lundman, 1996; Worden & Shepard, 1996), and…”

“Skogan (2005) argued that it was how police treated those they stopped or served that accounted most for the link between social cleavage and perception of police.”

“More generally, the criminological literature reveals that black people hold the most negative views of legal authorities (e.g. Skogan 2005; Bowling et al. 2003).”

“Please address correspondence to Amie M. Schuck, Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice (MC 141), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607; e-mail amms@uic.edu.”

“, Reisig & Parks, 2000) but does fall in line with studies showing the strong impact of demographics on attitudes toward police (e.g., Scaglion & Condon, 1980; Skogan, 2005; Tyler, 2005).”

“Skogan (2005) also reported different effects of procedural variables on overall satisfaction across police- and citizeninitiated contacts.”

“…towards them (Dean, 1980), that the influence of a negative contact with police is stronger than a positive contact on shaping views (Dean, 1980; Skogan, 2005, 2006), and that people’s satisfaction varies by the type of contact, with voluntary citizen-initiated contacts (such as reporting a…”

“…in stop-and-search situations (Bowling and Phillips, 2007; Delsol and Shiner, 2006), poorer treatment of non-white citizens during police encounters (Skogan, 2005), as well as disproportionally higher arrest-, charge- and incarceration rates for non-white offenders (Ministry of Justice, 2013).”

“Whether citizens have had recent encounters with police and the contextual nature of those encounters appear to affect views of police (Correia et al. 1996, Skogan 2005).”

“( 2005 ) who found, using panel data obtained by re-interviewing a sub-sample of respondents to a Chicago survey (Skogan 2005 ), that it was pre-existing negative attitudes that predicted dissatisfaction with specific encounters.”

“In studies by Sunshine and Tyler (2003), Tyler (1990) and Tyler and Huo (2002), procedural justice is the main antecedent of adults’ positive views about the legitimacy of police.”

“Citizens who report that they were treated respectfully and courteously during a face-to-face encounter express more positive attitudes toward police compared to those who feel they did not receive good treatment (Cheurprakobkit, 2000; Scaglion and Condon, 1980; Skogan, 2005; Wells, 2007; Weitzer and Tuch, 2005a; see…”

“Walker, Spohn, and DeLeon (2007, p.115) report that a 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that Hispanics were less likely to initiate contact with the police than either whites or Blacks (see also Walker, 1997; Skogan, 2005).”

“Whether citizens have had recent encounters with police and the contextual nature of those encounters appear to affect views of police (Correia, Reisig, & Lovrich, 1996; Skogan, 2005).”

“The academic research on race and policing has been hampered by the traditional practice of focusing on the differences either between Whites and Blacks or between Whites and so-called ‘non-Whites’, a catchall category that lumps Blacks, Latinos, and persons of other races into a single group (see, e.g., Alpert, Dunha…”

“In correspondence with the procedural justice model, Skogan (2005) found citizens’ evaluation of police encounters to be strongly predicted by the manner of police at the scene, including politeness, helpfulness and whether police paid attention to what citizens had to say.”

“…researchers have found that what the police do in these encounters powerfully sways the public’s confidence in and satisfaction with the police (Skogan 2005), and the aspects that seem to be especially powerful are not displays of crime-fighting prowess but rather process-oriented actions…”

“Research shows that people generally rate citizen-initiated contact with police, such as requests for assistance, more favourably than police-initiated contact, such as recording a traffic violation or random breath test (Reisig & Correia, 1997; Schafer et al., 2003; Skogan, 2005).”

“How police treat citizens, more so than demographic factors, determined satisfaction with police among Chicagoans (Skogan, 2005).”

“and searched by police during stops (Durose, Schmitt, & Langan, 2006; Langan, Greenfeld, Smith, Durose, & Levin, 2001), as well as report more negative experiences with police (Skogan, 2005; Son & Rome, 2004; Weitzer & Tuch, 2004).”

“…research has found that the actions and demeanor of the police are the primary factors driving citizens’ satisfaction with these interactions (Skogan, 2005), the attitudes and experiences adolescents bring to these interactions as well as the experiences of other community members, family,…”

“Previous work has examined the significance of the ‘quality of routine police-citizen encounters’ (Skogan 2005, p. 299), and how technologies affect calls to police in the way that calls are interpreted, managed, and handled (Manning 2003).”

“Previous research suggests that negative experiences are likely to have a stronger impact on the development of these unconscious profiles (Scaglion & Condon, 1980; Skogan, 2005; P. Smith & Hawkins, 1973).”

“Considering that police encounters are generally citizen-initiated (Skogan 2005), a police officer’s arrival at a scene often constitutes the basis for first impressions of the police.”

“…and personal characteristics can influence satisfaction in ways consistent with the results of community-wide surveys (Rosenbaum et al. 2005; Skogan 2005), in general, this body of work suggests that what the officer does during the encounters has a substantial impact on overall citizen…”

“To illustrate, research suggests that African Americans and Hispanic Americans are much more likely to be subjected to “stop and frisk” or vehicle stops than White Americans (Skogan, 2005; Weitzer et al., 2008) even though police are less likely to retrieve a weapon or confiscate drugs, as a result of the police proce…”

“This exposure can be direct through day-to-day encounters or personal wrongdoing or indirect through family, friends, and the media (Rosenbaum, Schuck, Costello, Hawkins, & Ring, 2005; Skogan, 2005).”

“Other factors, including personal experiences with police, both positive and negative (Tyler 2001, Tyler and Huo 2002, Bradford et al. 2009) and whether the encounter is voluntary or involuntary (Brown and Benedict 2002, Skogan 2005) can play a role.”

“The results gained in Finland do not confirm the results according to which personal experiences of having been victimized would decrease trust in the police, as has been discovered in the UK (Allen et al. 2006:8) and in the USA, for example (Skogan 2005:300).”

“This would mean that the quality of treatment does not matter (Skogan 2005).”

“Though much has been written about citizen perceptions of police services and satisfaction with police services (for example, Cheurprakobit and Bartsch, 2001; Correia et al., 1996; Skogan, 2005), very little research has addressed this important question in the private sector.”

“Previous literature examining the relationship between the police and the public indicates that the level of trust people have in the police is a reflection of police action and police engagement (Skogan 2005, 2006; Tyler 1990; Tyler and Fagan 2008).”

“…2003; Waddington and Braddock, 1991; Weitzer and Tuch, 1999, 2002), with interracial differences in perceptions of the police explained largely by differential experiences with the police (Brunson and Weitzer, 2009; Hagan et al., 2005; Hurst et al., 2000; Skogan 2005; Weitzer and Tuch, 2004b).”

“, service requests), tend to increase confidence in the police (Correia, Reisig, & Lovrich, 1996; Skogan, 2005).”

“…perceptions of legitimacy, not just amongst individuals exposed to it, but also more widely amongst family and community members, particularly if stops are conducted in an abusive or disrespectful manner (Skogan 2005, 2006, Brunson and Miller 2006, Sharp and Atherton 2007, Bradford et al. 2008).”

“It is more important for these four principles to be incorporated in interactions that are initiated by police when compared with those initiated by citizens (Murphy, 2009; Skogan, 2005).”

“…demeanor (Chandek, 1999), contacts with the police (Gau, 2010), victimization and feelings of unsafety (Payne & Gainey, 2007), police effectiveness (Skogan, 2005; Weitzer & Tuch, 2005a), quality of life policing (Zhao et al., 2015), and concentrated disadvantage (at the macro-leve)l (Dai &…”

“To report crime or suspicious activities, and to provide information to help police identify a criminal are often carried out by citizens (Newburn 1999; Skogan 2004, 2005).”

“Past research has found that public attitudes toward police vary by the type and context of citizen police interactions (see Hinds, 2009; Reisig & Correia, 1997; Schafer, Huebner, & Bynum, 2003; Skogan, 2005, 2006; Weitzer & Tuch, 2005).”

“We originally controlled for demographic factors associated with perceptions of police in the literature (i.e. age, gender, contact with police, and years since arrival in Australia; Skogan, 2005).”

“For example, the perceived benefit of police has long been thought to predict attitudes toward police (e.g., Correia, Reisig, and Lovrich 1996; Skogan 2005).”

“For police-initiated encounters, Black and Latino respondents were less satisfied with the police than Whites (Skogan, 2005).”

“…characteristics of victimized teachers (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, and tenure) are also included as independent variables, as prior research (Skogan, 2005; Wu, Sun, & Triplett, 2009) has found that these factors were significantly related to victims’ satisfaction with criminal justice…”

“Similarly, Skogan (2005) found that Hispanics and Blacks were less satisfied with their encounters with the police than Whites; however, when resident perceptions of police behavior were controlled, race and ethnicity were no longer significant, leaving perceptions of officer fairness and…”

“Likewise, Wells (2007) found that, in police-initiated encounters, procedural justice was more important than instrumental outcomes and demographic factors in predicting citizens’ overall evaluations of police (see also Skogan, 2005, Murphy 2009).”

“Moreover, Skogan (2005) found that Spanish-speaking Latinx respondents in Chicago were less likely than English-speaking Latinx respondents in the city to report that “police paid careful attention to what they had to say” during citizen-initiated encounters (i.e., when they needed the police).15…”

“Whites consistently display greater trust and confidence in the police relative to minorities (Skogan, 2005; Tyler, 2005; Weitzer & Tuch, 2002).”

“Past research has found that negative direct contact (e.g., Brandl et al. 1994; Skogan 2005) and negative vicarious contact (e.g., Hurst and Frank 2000; Rosenbaum et al. 2005) with the police are related to more negative perceptions of the police.”

“Residents of communities with certain structural characteristics, including disadvantaged communities or those with large Black populations, report less support for police than do those living in more affluent Caucasian neighborhoods (Skogan, 2005; Tyler, 2005; Gau et al., 2012).”

“Some research suggests that how the police treat those they encounter accounts partly for the connection between social cleavage and perceptions of the police (Skogan, 2005).”

“, they may develop a code of the street orientation; Anderson, 1999), or they may be less likely to initiate calls to the police for service or intervention (Carr et al., 2007; Gibson, Walker, Jennings, & Miller, 2009; Rose & Clear, 1998; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998; Skogan, 2005), or to cooperate with the police in open…”

“While some studies have found that women tend to view police more favorably (Cao et al., 1996; Lai & Zhao, 2010; Skogan, 2005; Reisig & Correia, 1997; Weitzer and Tuch, 2002), others have found the opposite or no effect (Haberman et al., 2016; Ratcliffe et al., 2015; Ren et al., 2005; Sims et …”

“…explaining the action that was taken, paying attention to what the citizen had to say, and explaining their right, all affect citizens’ satisfaction with encounters (Quinton, Bland, & Miller, 2000; Reisig & Chandek, 2001; Skogan, 2005; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002; Wells, 2007).”

“These efforts attend to the importance of positive interactions and communication for feelings of satisfaction with police (Skogan 2005), and potentially redress community feelings of mistrust in police officers (Menjívar and Bejarano 2004).”