Community Policing and Police Legitimacy: A Field Experiment”

• In Event: Justice and Injustice: Political Science Perspectives on Crime and Punishment Mini-Conference Lunchtime Poster Session: New Questions in the Politics of Punishment

Abstract

Community Oriented Policing Strategies (COPS) are a popular public policy tool for
counteracting distrust of police and building cooperative relationships between police and the
public. In particular, the benefits of COPS are believed to rest on these strategies’ ability to
improve police legitimacy: the belief that police have the authority to dictate proper behavior and
that the public should cooperate with police in their efforts to enforce the law. To achieve this
enhanced legitimacy, COPS are designed to facilitate nonenforcement
contact between the
public and police officers, an important feature given the robust literature demonstrating how
intergroup contact can improve intergroup relations. The lack of experimental evidence on the
effectiveness of COPS limits the ability of police departments to identify actionable strategies, to
convince skeptics about the value of COPS, and to justify the allocation of limited resources
towards these strategies instead of simple enforcement. We partnered with a large urban police
department to design and implement a randomized field experiment of COPS that generated
nonenforcement
interactions between police and residents. We estimate the impact of the
intervention on residents' attitudes toward police with a longitudinal survey that is unconnected
to the police department. We focus primarily on survey measures that capture attitudes (e.g.
perceived legitimacy) and behavioral intentions (e.g. willingness to cooperate).

Authors

• Kyle Peyton, Yale University

• Michael Sierra-Arévalo, Rutgers-Newark

• David Rand, MIT