Show Me, Don't Tell Me: a Picturesqu View of Perceptions of Police

• In Event: Alternative Texts and Processes to Assess Punishment, the Police, and the Reentry Experience

Abstract

This research takes a different approach to the issue of citizen perceptions of the police. It simply consists of asking participants to draw a picture of a police officer. By approaching the issue in this way, we can use the participants’ depictions to get a visual understanding of how citizens perceive the police. We can then summarize the general characteristics of people’s perceptions of the police and determine if and how those perceptions vary based on race, sex and age. The hope is that this analysis of how participants visually depict their perceptions of the police will complement the existing literature on how citizens verbally depict their perceptions of the police.

Authors

• Jason Twede, University of Akron

• Nancy Marion, University of Akron