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Racial Differences in Conceptualizing Legitimacy and Trust in Police

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Abstract

Scholarly debate on how best to conceptualize legitimacy and trust in police has generally assumed these conceptualizations are stable across demographics. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this may not be the case. We examine how the public conceptualizes legitimacy and trust in police, how public conceptualizations relate to academic debate on these terms, and how public views differ between and within racial groups. This work is exploratory, though it is rooted in differences found in theoretically driven empirical work on the subject. Data are from online, national samples of White (N = 650), Black (N = 624), and Hispanic (N = 626) adults in the United States that are approximately representative of each racial group on key demographics. We asked participants to define legitimacy and trust and to indicate whether or not they view the terms as synonymous. We found numerous between-race and within-race differences in citizen-driven conceptualizations of legitimacy and trust. Results suggest that legitimacy and trust mean different things to different groups of people. Additionally, results show that public definitions of legitimacy and trust align with some academic conceptualizations but not others. We expect this research to inform the academic literature on defining legitimacy and trust.

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Notes

  1. For example, Sunshine and Tyler’s survey of New York City residents asked people the extent to which they agreed with the statement “You should accept the decisions made by police, even if you think they are wrong” (p. 543) and “I have confidence that the NYPD can do its job well” (p. 543). Some variations exist on this basic measurement of legitimacy, such as Tyler and Fagan’s (2008) addition of identification with the police or cynicism about the law (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002).

  2. In this vein, it is important to note that a distinction must be drawn between the attitudes that foster legitimacy and the concepts that comprise legitimacy. While the former are actions or attitudes that cause citizens to feel that authorities are legitimate, the latter are the underlying concepts that constitute legitimacy itself. These must be carefully differentiated as conflating them adds to the confusion in the literature regarding the concepts associated with legitimacy.

  3. While racial differences in attitudes toward police are found in the vast majority of the literature, this relationship is not always present (Jesilow, Meyer, & Namazzi, 1995). This may suggest that attitudinal differences toward police across races are not as stark as generally assumed, or that variance in how these concepts are measured across studies accounts for some of the differences.

  4. Each completed survey was reviewed to ensure that the participant was not straight-lining answers or providing nonsense responses. Data for participants who did this were discarded and replaced (N = 111; 5.5%).

  5. The survey was conducted in English. While participants could respond to open-ended questions in any language, only one responded in another language. As described in more detail below, most responses were merely a few words, which does not lend itself to qualitative analyses. Rather, we coded the responses into categories to analyze quantitatively.

  6. When coding the remaining responses, we did not identify any additional categories that were not identified from this original subsample. Of note, one RA created the codes from a subsample of responses and a second RA (and co-author) coded all responses as described below.

  7. The tetrachoric correlations among these outcome variables ranges from −0.17 to 0.17.

  8. The tetrachoric correlations among these outcome variables ranges from −0.17 to 0.32.

  9. Of the 479 participants who defined trust as confidence, 88.7% indicated that they meant confidence in outcome only while 0.8% indicated confidence in both treatment and outcome. Another 10.4% simply said “confidence” so it is not possible to discern whether they were referring to confidence in outcome, treatment, or both. No participants indicated that they meant confidence in treatment only.

  10. For legitimacy, 9.4% of the responses were coded as “other.” The most prevalent response (N = 35) was a circular definition of “being legitimate” followed by “training” (N = 12). For trust, 14.4% of responses were coded as “other.” Again, the most prevalent response within the “other’ category (N = 131) was a circular definition of either “trustworthy” or “not trustworthy.” Further, 7.8% of people indicated that they did not know how to define the term legitimacy, while 0.9% participants indicated that they did not know how to define the term trust. The lack of other consistent conceptualization provides further confidence that our coding scheme is not missing meaningful elements.

  11. We coded 19 total conceptualizations—9 for legitimacy and 10 for trust when including the “other” and “not sure” categories. Given the heterogeneity of “other” responses for both legitimacy and trust and the low frequency of “not sure” for trust, these were excluded from analyses as meaningful dependent variables. We do examine predictors of “not sure” responses for legitimacy given their prevalence.

  12. The tetrachoric correlation coefficients and p-values for each component is as follows: lawfulness (rho = .20; p = 0.030), honesty (rho = .23; p = 0.014), fairness (rho = .34; p < 0.001), moral behavior (rho = .20; p = .038), effectiveness (rho = .24; p = 0.022), and protection (rho = .40; p < .001).

  13. The tetrachoric correlation coefficients and p-values for each component is as follows: lawfulness (rho = .14; p = 0.044), honesty (rho = .10; p = 0.221), fairness (rho = .08; p = 0.327), moral behavior (rho = −.11; p = .369), effectiveness (rho = .11; p = 0.280), and protection (rho = .14; p = .172).

  14. The tetrachoric correlation coefficients and p-values for each component is as follows: lawfulness (rho = .26; p = 0.098), honesty (rho = .33; p = 0.003), fairness (rho = .40; p = 0.001), moral behavior (rho = .39; p = .013), effectiveness (rho = .26; p = 0.046), and protection (rho = .01; p = 1.00).

  15. Providing protection could be interpreted as a form of police effectiveness, which would line up with Bottoms and Tankebe’s conceptualization of legitimacy. Even if these two definitions were combined, still less than one quarter of the sample spontaneously defined legitimacy as either effectiveness or protection.

  16. The correlations among these demographic variables range from −0.12 to 0.38. We also examined the interactions between demographic factors though these interaction terms did not produce significant or consistent results and thus are not reported in text.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Diana Dolliver, Matthew Dolliver, Joseph A. Hamm, Joel Hunt, Kelly Kortright, Gary LaFree, Ed Maguire, Alyssa Purdy, Carol Ann Sharo, Joseph K. Young, and Thomas Zeitzoff for providing feedback on this project at various stages. Vivian Hagerty provided invaluable research assistance on this project.

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This research was supported by the American University Dissertation Research Award awarded to Erin M. Kearns.

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  1. Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Alabama, 431 Farrah Hall, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35401, USA

    Erin M. Kearns

  2. American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20016, USA

    Emma Ashooh

  3. St. Francis College, 180 Remsen St, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, USA

    Belén Lowrey-Kinberg

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Kearns, E.M., Ashooh, E. & Lowrey-Kinberg, B. Racial Differences in Conceptualizing Legitimacy and Trust in Police. Am J Crim Just 45, 190–214 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-019-09501-8

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