The Effect of Victimization on Police Effectiveness, Legitimacy and Co-operation: A Longitudinal Study

• In Event: Predicting Cooperation with Police and Compliance with the Law

Abstract

Policing research highlights the importance of the co-operation of the community and police agencies to work together to reduce crime. For the community, the strength of their co-operation is driven by their perceived effectiveness and legitimacy of the police. A number of studies highlight that victims of crime often have lower levels of satisfaction with police performance that non-victims. Whether or not these negative perceptions of police effectiveness detract from the perceived legitimacy provides mixed findings in the literature. In this research, we engage longitudinal data from the Australian Community Capacity Study. We utilize a longitudinal sample of respondents from Waves 3 (2010) and 4 (2012) to examine the change in perceptions of police effectiveness, legitimacy and co-operation. We directly compare these changes using respondents who had not reported victimization in 2010 but reported victimization in 2012, and respondents who had not experienced victimized at either time point. Results indicate that while recent victims have lower perceptions of police effectiveness and legitimacy, their likelihood to co-operate with the police does not differ from non-victims.

Authors

• Kathryn Benier, University of Queensland, Australia

• Rebecca Leigh Wickes, The University of Queensland