A comparative study of satisfaction with the police in the United States and Australia
| Author | Xin Jiang,Mengyan Dai |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865814545684 |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2016, Vol. 49(1) 30–52
A comparative study of
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865814545684
the United States and Australia
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Mengyan Dai
Old Dominion University, USA
Xin Jiang
Slippery Rock University, USA
Abstract
This study comparatively examines three major models of citizens’ satisfaction with the
police, using two similar community surveys on policing from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA and
Queensland, Australia. It tests the wider applicability of the demographic model, the neigh-
borhood condition model, and the prior contacts with police model and analyzes whether the
effects of common determinants on citizens’ satisfaction remain the same across the two
international samples. Results from a series of comparisons show that there is a substantial
amount of similarity across statistical models for Cincinnati and Queensland, suggesting a
general framework of citizens’ satisfaction with the police that could be generalized to other
international contexts. Limitations and future directions of comparative research in this area
are also discussed.
Keywords
Australia, citizens’ satisfaction with police, comparative study, international study, policing,
United States
Introduction
Public attitudes toward the police have been an important research topic in the criminal
justice literature for decades (Brown & Benedict, 2002). Since the 1960s, a substantial
body of research has focused on the key determinants of citizens’ attitudes toward the
police in the United States, both at the individual level (such as demographic factors,
attitudinal factors, and personal experiences with the criminal justice system) and at the
aggregate level (e.g. Dai & Johnson, 2009; Reisig & Parks, 2000; Sampson & Jeglum-
Bartusch, 1998). Such an examination on public attitudes toward the police has the
potential of yielding practical benefits. A positive image of the police enhances its
Corresponding author:
Mengyan Dai, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA.
Email: mdai@odu.edu
Dai and Jiang
31
legitimacy and trustworthiness, which in turn encourages citizens’ constructive partici-
pation in the criminal justice process (such as cooperating with the police during encoun-
ters, providing crime-related information, and serving as jurors in jury trials). Positive
attitudes toward the police also help promote citizens’ internal obligation to obey the
law, leading to a society of less crime (Tyler, 1990, 2003, 2004).
Much quantitative research on citizens’ attitudes toward the police has been con-
ducted in the United States, and the studies that make cross-cultural comparisons are
very limited (see Cao, Stack & Sun, 1998). International comparative research in policing
is still a marginal enterprise in the professional study of criminal justice. It usually faces
the criticism of comparing apples with oranges and is often thought to be difficult and of
little value. Further compounding the problem is that international comparative studies
in policing usually emphasize differences rather than similarities, with a less focus on
theory generalization. Bayley (1999) once observed that in the study of policing, inter-
national differences were usually perceived to be so great as to bear no relation to one’s
own national or local experiences in policing.
Bayley’s (1999)
observation represents an example of the culturist approach to
cross-national comparative research. Culturalism rejects the existence of universal con-
cepts and values, and focuses on the ‘‘specificity, distinctiveness, or uniqueness’’ of the
social and cultural contexts (Hantrais, 1999, p. 95). In contrast, there is another
approach, the universalist approach, which aims to search for general laws or universal
factors capable of explaining social phenomena in various contexts. Thus, universalism
is more interested in testing for the wider applicability of a theory (Hantrais, 1999).
A more balanced comparative method is to take intermediate positions between the
extremes of culturalism and universalism, and identify general factors that can be
interpreted with reference to specific societal contexts. In this way, comparative
research not only recognizes societal/cultural differences and similarities, but also con-
tributes to theory integration and generalization. To date, unfortunately, little policing
research has produced generalizations from the American experiences, and little is
known about what policing theories are applicable in an international context.
Policing researchers often, either explicitly or implicitly, limit the scope of their
theory to certain jurisdictions, agencies, and programs. They frequently suggest exer-
cising caution when making generalization of findings, even within the same national
boundary.
Studies on public attitudes toward the police, as an important component of policing
research, are also subject to the above limitations. Public attitudes toward the police are
embedded in cultural and geopolitical contexts (Jang, Joo, & Zhao, 2010), and one can
expect that the diverse backgrounds and contexts in various societies generate different
explanations of attitudes toward the police. Since the 1930s when American scholars
started to assess public evaluations of the police (Brown & Benedict, 2002), comparative
research has extended the territory of study from the United States to many foreign
areas in the world (e.g. Cao, 2001; Cao & Dai, 2006; Cao & Hou, 2001; Cao et al., 1998;
Cao & Zhao, 2005; Ivkovic, 2008; Stack & Cao, 1998). However, most studies usually
compare the levels of citizens’ evaluations of the police without using common theoret-
ical models developed in the United States.
To fill the research void, this study aims to examine the three major models of citizens’
satisfaction with the police that have been extensively studied in the United States, using
32
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 49(1)
two very similar datasets from the United States and Australia. In particular, we utilize
two citizen surveys that were conducted with very similar questionnaires in Cincinnati,
Ohio, USA and Queensland, Australia. These two citizen surveys were designed to col-
lect extensive information about citizens’ perceptions about the police, their neighbor-
hoods, and prior experiences with the police. The datasets therefore provide sufficient
information to test the common models (including the demographic model, neighbor-
hood condition model, and prior contacts with the police model) in the literature in a
comparative context.
In addition to the common comparative method of identifying significant predictors
of citizens’ satisfaction with the police in different samples, this study uses the analytical
strategy discussed by Paternoster, Brame, Mazerolle, and Piquero (1998) to test for the
difference between regression coefficients across the two independent samples. This ana-
lysis enables us to determine whether the effect of a given explanatory factor of public
attitudes is invariant across the two samples from the United States and Australia.
Consistent findings from this comparative analysis will contribute to the generalization
of common theoretical models of citizens’ satisfaction with the police in international
contexts.
Prior research
There is a long tradition of studying public opinion in democratic societies (Brown
& Benedict, 2002; Gaubatz, 1995; Roberts, 1992), and many often-cited quantita-
tive studies on this topic were conducted with data from the United States. This
body of research not only describes how the public perceives the police, but also
explores the correlates of pubic opinions and provides policy suggestions for
improving public relations. It is obvious that the value of studying public percep-
tions is not limited to Western democracies. For example, in their comparative
study of The Philippines, Korea, and Taiwan, Cao and Dai (2006) argue that
public opinions also play a critical role in a society experiencing democratic tran-
sition by driving political parties toward moderation on sensitive and divisive
issues.
In policing literature, many studies specifically examined the correlates of citizens’
satisfaction with the police in the United States, and three general models have pre-
vailed in the empirical research (e.g. Brown & Benedict, 2002; Dai & Johnson, 2009;
Reisig & Parks, 2000; Weizer, 2000; Zhao et al., 2014). The first model focuses on the
influence of demographic factors on citizens’ satisfaction with the police. For example,
research often found that juveniles, lower social class, and racial or ethnical minority
groups were more likely to be dissatisfied with the police in the United States. The
second model concerns prior contacts with the police and focuses on the influences of
prior experiences with the police on citizens’ general attitudes. The third model is
neighborhood conditions model which holds the police accountable for the quality
of life issues in the neighborhood. In a summary of more than 100 studies on percep-
tions of and attitudes toward the police, Brown and Benedict (2002) found that in spite
of the large body of literature, consistent findings were limited to some factors in these
three models. Thus, the following literature review focuses on these models of citizens’
satisfaction with the police.
Dai and Jiang
33
The demographic model
It...
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