Perceptions of Trust and Procedural Justice as Sources of Receptivity and Resistance to Video Surveillance

University Of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas NV

Investigators

Abstract

Unprecedented video coverage of negative police-citizen encounters has fueled civil unrest and questions about the public trust in police and the criminal justice system. When the police are viewed positively (e.g., fair, impartial, trustworthy), previous research reveals strong public support for them. Over the last decade, however, the convergence of major social changes in the U.S. (e.g., the wider availability of video technology to capture images of police violence and abuse of power, the growing racial divide, and declining confidence in social institutions) challenge this notion that fairness and trust are enough to produce positive police-citizen relations. The proposed study will conduct a large national survey and citywide interviews to test these ideas about the impact of public perceptions of officer conduct, institutional anomie, procedural justice, and police legitimacy on police-citizen relations and support for "video policing" activities through the use of body-worn cameras and aerial drones. In this post-Ferguson period of racial animus and strained police-citizen relations, the obtained survey results will provide direct evidence of the "best practices" for improving public support for various police practices and developing a more nuanced approach to community policing that is more effective in crime control and fosters better police-citizen relations, especially in minority neighborhoods where basic trust in police may be most problematic. By exploring the impact of public perceptions about procedural justice and police legitimacy on their support for video policing activities in contemporary American society, the proposed study departs from extant research by its (1) focus on public support for police use of evolving video technology (e.g., body-worn cameras, aerial drones), (2) empirical evaluation of whether the influence of perceptions of police fairness and legitimacy are highly contextual, mediated or moderated by one's race, direct experiences with police and negative video images of them, the type of police activity (e.g., proactive versus reactive policing) and feelings of institutional anomie, and (3) analytic methods (i.e., the use conjunctive analysis to study this causal complexity). The results of this study will provide direct social benefits by identifying particular conditions under which police can use mobile video technology (i.e., body cameras and aerial drones) to increase community safety and support with lower public resistance. It will also identify conditions under which video technology is viewed as invasive, ineffective and/or selectively (mis)used, thereby eroding this public safety and support.