Police-Public Encounters
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“Survey Assessments of Police Performance” In Mike Hough and Mike
Maxfield (eds.), Surveying Crime in the 21st Century. Crime Prevention
Studies, 22 (2007), 165-181.
This article considers the British Crime Survey (BCS) as a vehicle for monitoring police performance.
The BCS has two complimentary foci on the police: monitoring reports of general confidence in the
police and tracking encounters between police and the public. These raise substantive and
methodological issues, and have implications for survey design. Among these are response validity,
or the issue of whether "confidence" questions actually reflect the quality of policing on the ground.
We also need to ensure that the measurement process measures what it does with maximal
accuracy. This paper reviews validity and reliability issues in the context of assessing general
confidence and tracking public encounters with the police. It calls for a program of methodological
research to document the error structure of the data and guide improvements and decisions about
key features of the survey.
Maxfield (eds.), Surveying Crime in the 21st Century. Crime Prevention
Studies, 22 (2007), 165-181.
This article considers the British Crime Survey (BCS) as a vehicle for monitoring police performance.
The BCS has two complimentary foci on the police: monitoring reports of general confidence in the
police and tracking encounters between police and the public. These raise substantive and
methodological issues, and have implications for survey design. Among these are response validity,
or the issue of whether "confidence" questions actually reflect the quality of policing on the ground.
We also need to ensure that the measurement process measures what it does with maximal
accuracy. This paper reviews validity and reliability issues in the context of assessing general
confidence and tracking public encounters with the police. It calls for a program of methodological
research to document the error structure of the data and guide improvements and decisions about
key features of the survey.
“Police-Community Relations in a Majority Black City,” Journal of
Research in Crime and Delinquency, 45 (No. 4, November 2008), 398-428.
(with Ronald Weitzer and Steven A. Tuch).
Minority racial and ethnic groups often view themselves as targets of abusive treatment at the
hands of the police. Although racial variation in public assessments of the police in the United
States has been amply documented in past research, less research has explored the sources
of these differences at the intersection of demographic, interactional, and ecological levels.
This paper examines the role of each factor in shaping citizens’ perceptions of police
misconduct, racial differences in these perceptions, and the reasons underlying them. The
locus of the study is also important. Most research on police-community relations has been
conducted in cities whose populations and police departments are majority-white in
composition, despite the growing number of minority-white cities. The present study draws on
data from residents of a majority-black city with a majority-black police department:
Washington, DC. The findings contribute to our understanding of policing in such under-
researched cities.
Research in Crime and Delinquency, 45 (No. 4, November 2008), 398-428.
(with Ronald Weitzer and Steven A. Tuch).
Minority racial and ethnic groups often view themselves as targets of abusive treatment at the
hands of the police. Although racial variation in public assessments of the police in the United
States has been amply documented in past research, less research has explored the sources
of these differences at the intersection of demographic, interactional, and ecological levels.
This paper examines the role of each factor in shaping citizens’ perceptions of police
misconduct, racial differences in these perceptions, and the reasons underlying them. The
locus of the study is also important. Most research on police-community relations has been
conducted in cities whose populations and police departments are majority-white in
composition, despite the growing number of minority-white cities. The present study draws on
data from residents of a majority-black city with a majority-black police department:
Washington, DC. The findings contribute to our understanding of policing in such under-
researched cities.