Micro-Geographic Public Opinion: Support for Police Reform

• In Event: Issues and Advances in Measurement and Design

Abstract

Demands for accountability of law enforcement in the United States are growing following well-publicized incidents of police use of force and widespread protests, accompanied by a concomitant sharp decline in public support for policing. Policy reforms in response, however, have been slow to develop. Using an original $n=15,000$ national survey, we show there is widespread geographic and bipartisan support for democratic oversight of policing through civilian review boards. At the micro-level, we use multilevel regression and post-stratification to demonstrate that county-level support for police reform varies by policing institutional arrangement (municipal departments versus sheriffs) and by the prevalence of anti-police protests. Our results suggest that policymakers are likely to benefit from generous public support for implementing reforms aimed at improving the democratic accountability of local law enforcement agencies.

Authors

• Josh McCrain, University of Utah

• Ian T. Adams, University of South Carolina

• Scott Mourtgos, University of South Carolina

• Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Purdue University

• Daniel Schiff, Purdue University

• Chandler Robinston, University of Utah