Linking Race and Attitudes Towards the Police to the Fear of Crime

• In Event: Fear of Hate Crimes and Identity-Based Victimization

Abstract

A considerable amount of research has focused on the relationship between fear of crime and attitudes towards the police. Policing researchers typically have empirically investigated the hypothesis that a greater police presence, or community-oriented police efforts, reduce fear of crime. Others have examined fear crime as an independent variable affecting attitudes towards the police. In this study we used multiple years of data (2015-2017) from a survey of seven cities in southeastern state to empirically investigate this relationship. Although the data were not collected in an effort to disentangling the causal relationship between fear and attitudes towards the police, they do allow for a systematic evaluation of factors that moderate the relationship. Structural equation models (SEM) show a relatively small but significant relationship between fear of crime and attitudes towards the police but that this relationship varies across various demographic groups, especially race. The empirical findings of the analyses are discussed in light of policy and theoretical development.

Authors

• Randy Gainey, Old Dominion University

• Allison T. Chappell, Old Dominion University

• Daniel Pryce, Old Dominion University