Examining Confidence in and Satisfaction with the Police: Results from a Mailed Survey in a Small City in Pennsylvania

• In Event: Police-Community Survey Research

Abstract

One of the most important aspects of effective policing is the relationship between the police and the community that they serve. As such, this paper examines citizen confidence and satisfaction with the police in their neighborhoods. Primary data was collected in January of 2017 via a mailed survey to households from a small city in Pennsylvania of about 75,000 residents. A random twelve percent of eligible households were selected to receive the survey, resulting in 3,261 surveys being mailed out. The survey asked adult residents about various aspects of their perceptions of crime, fear of crime in their neighborhoods, routine activities, views on citizen involvement in crime prevention, various demographic information, and their confidence and satisfaction with the local police. As some recent literature has suggested that there are important differences between satisfaction with and confidence in the police, bivariate analyses and regression analyses were used to predict satisfaction with the police and confidence in the police separately.

Authors

• Michelle Anne Bolger, DeSales University

• Philip Bolger, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania