Police Legitimacy and the Norm to Cooperate: Using a Mixed Effects Location-Scale Model to Estimate the Strength of Social Norms at a Small Spatial Scale

Abstract

Objectives Test whether cooperation with the police can be modelled as a place-based norm that varies in strength from one neighborhood to the next. Estimate whether perceived police legitimacy predicts an individual's willingness to cooperate in weak-norm neighborhoods, but not in strong-norm neighborhoods where most people are either willing or unwilling to cooperate, irrespective of their perceptions of police legitimacy. Methods A survey of 1057 individuals in 98 relatively high-crime English neighborhoods defined at a small spatial scale measured (a) willingness to cooperate using a hypothetical crime vignette and (b) legitimacy using indicators of normative alignment between police and citizen values. A mixed-effects, location-scale model estimated the cluster-level mean and cluster-level variance of willingness to cooperate as a neighborhood-level latent variable. A cross-level interaction tested whether legitimacy predicts individual-level willingness to cooperate only in neighborhoods where the norm is weak. Results Willingness to cooperate clustered strongly by neighborhood. There were neighborhoods with (1) high mean and low variance, (2) high mean and high variance, (3) (relatively) low mean and low variance, and (4) (relatively) low mean and high variance. Legitimacy was only a positive predictor of cooperation in neighborhoods that had a (relatively) low mean and high variance. There was little variance left to explain in neighborhoods where the norm was strong. Conclusions Findings support a boundary condition of procedural justice theory: namely, that cooperation can be modelled as a place-based norm that varies in strength from neighborhood to neighborhood and that legitimacy only predicts an individual's willingness to cooperate in neighborhoods where the norm is relatively weak.

Are Trustworthiness and Legitimacy ‘Hard to Win, Easy to Lose’? A Longitudinal Test of the Asymmetry Thesis of Police-Citizen Contact

“…Public support is essential for the good functioning of the criminal justice systemthe police, in particular, rely on public confidence to function effectively (Jackson et al 2020). Without public support, police work is costly, difficult, and to some extent ineffective.…”

Us and Them: On the Motivational Force of Formal and Informal Lockdown Rules

“…Adding legitimacy of the law and the expressive function of the law and swapping prescriptive/proscriptive social norms for a broader conception of social norms based also on in-group moral norms, "us"; we are all doing it for each other. 4 We examined the predictors of compliance for each wave separately, and we fitted cross-lagged panel models to assess the predictors of change over time. We briefly summarise these results here.…”

“…Do legal requirements combine with social norms to create motivational pressure? [4] The traditional view is that the law works through deterrence: people will obey pandemic legislation because they fear the consequences of disobedience. If social norms are informal rules that govern behaviour (people will wear a face covering because they fear disapproval from others), then the law provides formal rules that people will follow because they fear sanction from authorities (a fine for not wearing a face covering).…”

“…The measures of prescriptive/proscriptive social norms were "Most people in my local community think it is the right thing to strictly follow social distancing to help prevent the spread of Covid-19" and "Most people in my local community would disapprove if some individuals were not strictly following social distancing to help prevent the spread of Covid-19" 4. This (expanded) measure of social norms included not only "Most people in my local community think it is the right thing to strictly follow social distancing to help prevent the spread of Covid-19" and "Most people in my local community would disapprove if some individuals were not strictly following social distancing to help prevent the spread of Covid-19" but also "Everybody should strictly follow social distancing to help prevent the spread of Covid-19" and "How important is it to the National Health Service that everybody sticks to the guidelines on social distancing?…”

Statement of Removal

“…'is that the police cannot fight crime or promote community safety alone. Public cooperation is central to effective and equitable day-to-day police workan absence of cooperation impairs the efficiency of the police and erodes the fairness of their operations (Goudriaan et al, 2006;Jackson et al, 2020). There is also a good deal of evidence that people who see the police as trustworthy and legitimate are more likely to report crimes, give intelligence crucial to investigations, and so forth (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;Jackson et al, 2013;Tyler & Jackson, 2014;Sifrer et al, 2015).…”