Will the Current Crisis in Police Legitimacy Increase Crime? Research Offers a Way Forward

Abstract

Police legitimacy is all too timely a topic. As I am writing this commentary, instances of police use of lethal force against unarmed civilians are prominent. In Cincinnati, North Charleston, Cleveland, Staten Island, and elsewhere, video recordings have documented what appears to be unprovoked or at least unwarranted violence by a uniformed officer against someone stopped for a minor violation. The fact that the victims in these publicized encounters are minorities, and that the officers’ version of events is sometimes contradicted by the video evidence, suggests that such attacks may be quite common, as has long been asserted by the African American community. Starting with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the “Black Lives Matter” campaign has provided a slogan for a growing perception that young black men are targeted by the police in an all-too-literal sense. In June, Gallup reported a drop of 5 percentage points in the fraction of the adult American public who have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police, as compared to the previous poll on this topic in 2013 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/183704/confidence-policelowest-years.aspx). While the police still enjoy more trust than most public institutions, it appears that the publicity given to unwarranted police violence has undercut their legitimacy, at least for the time being. What are the implications of this loss? Tom Tyler, Phillip Goff, and Robert MacCoun argue that police legitimacy is an end in itself but also an important asset in gaining the cooperation and compliance of the public, both with police authority and with the law itself. As the authors suggest, these ideas are becoming well established. In fact, they are supported by a 2004 report of an expert panel convened by the National Research Council (NRC), for which Tyler was a consultant and source (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). The NRC panel contrasted legitimacy with lawfulness, noting that “by legitimacy we mean the judgments that ordinary citizens make about the rightfulness of police conduct and the organizations that employ and supervise them” (p. 291). By this definition, legitimacy is subjective but influenced by the actions of police: “When they adhere to the rules, maintain their neutrality, and treat people with dignity and respect, police legitimacy increases” (p. 292). The NRC panel went on to observe that legitimacy is important not only in influencing the behavior of individual citizens but also in the political process: “If citizens trust the police, they will be willing to invest more authority in the police and spend more taxpayer dollars on them” (p. 291). Thus, the NRC panel’s analysis is the basis for a set of predictions about the consequences of the loss in public trust, such as has occurred over the last year or two: