The Challenge in Making Effective Research Influence Policing

The research into public confidence in policing was driven by the fact that we were keen to move beyond crude ‘tick-box’ notions of citizen satisfaction, which offer ways of thinking about the direct contact between citizens, policing and their police. The work on confidence asks ‘why’ police are important in democratic relationship between citizen and state. For many police officers, trying to enhance the legitimacy of their organisation can often seem an abstract or over-complicated endeavour, especially if they believe their core concern should be around improving tactics to fight crime. Of course, these are not mutually exclusive aims. The research on public confidence is trying to influence the way police interact with citizens. There is considerable evidence that trust in the police is important for the rule of law in itself. Trust in policing is linked to concrete citizen behaviours—cooperation with officers, compliance with the law and engagement in informal social control—that would help police to achieve their crime fighting goals and benefit officers by helping them doing their own jobs better (Tyler 1990; 2007; 2011; Tyler and Fagan 2008; Tyler and Huo 2002; Sunshine and Tyler 2003). Tyler’s procedural justice model (Tyler 1990) is now being discussed in a number of countries for its link to improved policing. He firmly links the fairness with which police officers exercise their authority to public trust, police legitimacy, and the types of behaviour listed above. Interpreted in its broadest (and perhaps most optimistic) light, procedural justice theory holds out the promise of a criminal justice system predicated on a more cooperative and less coercive relationship between police and public than it often seems to be the case (Hough et al. 2010). And it does so by placing the relationship between police and public centre stage. Perhaps we in Western democracies have underestimated the damage distrust does to public cooperation with public institutions. But following the disorders in London in 2011 and in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 we are less dismissive of its critical requirement.