Immigrants’ trust in police in Canada: A vignette study

• In Event: Procedural Justice Policing: Applying new insights to improve police-citizen relations

Abstract

While existing research has found procedural justice to be an important driver of citizen trust in police, to date, limited research has explored the views that people bring with them into encounters with police. These views or expectations of treatment (Anticipatory Justice) are important as they may shape how people interpret police treatment. Drawing on over 700 responses to a vignette study, we examine how both universal and immigrant specific factors, and treatment expectations shape citizens’ views of police. More specifically, we interrogate the role of pre-existing expectations in shaping how immigrants perceive police-citizen encounters and their conferral of trust in police. As the first experimental test of anticipatory justice, the results of the study have important implications for ongoing exploration of this emerging construct.

Authors

• Natasha Madon, Griffith University

• Maria Jung, Toronto Metropolitan University

• Carolyn Greene, Athabasca University