Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511;
Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Oct 1;116(40):19894-19898. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1910157116. Epub 2019 Sep 16.
Despite decades of declining crime rates, longstanding tensions between police and the public continue to frustrate the formation of cooperative relationships necessary for the function of the police and the provision of public safety. In response, policy makers continue to promote community-oriented policing (COP) and its emphasis on positive, nonenforcement contact with the public as an effective strategy for enhancing public trust and police legitimacy. Prior research designs, however, have not leveraged the random assignment of police-public contact to identify the causal effect of such interactions on individual-level attitudes toward the police. Therefore, the question remains: Do positive, nonenforcement interactions with uniformed patrol officers actually cause meaningful improvements in attitudes toward the police? Here, we report on a randomized field experiment conducted in New Haven, CT, that sheds light on this question and identifies the individual-level consequences of positive, nonenforcement contact between police and the public. Findings indicate that a single instance of positive contact with a uniformed police officer can substantially improve public attitudes toward police, including legitimacy and willingness to cooperate. These effects persisted for up to 21 d and were not limited to individuals inclined to trust and cooperate with the police prior to the intervention. This study demonstrates that positive nonenforcement contact can improve public attitudes toward police and suggests that police departments would benefit from an increased focus on strategies that promote positive police-public interactions.
尽管犯罪率在几十年里持续下降，但警方与公众之间长期存在的紧张关系仍阻碍了为警察履行职能和提供公共安全所必需的合作关系的形成。有鉴于此，政策制定者继续提倡社区警务（COP），并强调与公众进行积极的非执法接触，以此作为增强公众信任和警察合法性的有效策略。然而，先前的研究设计并未利用警察与公众接触的随机分配来确定此类互动对个人层面的警察态度的因果影响。因此，问题仍然存在：与穿制服的巡逻警察进行积极的非执法互动实际上是否会对警察态度产生有意义的改善？在这里，我们报告了在康涅狄格州纽黑文市进行的一项随机现场实验，该实验阐明了这个问题，并确定了警察与公众之间积极的非执法接触对个人层面的影响。研究结果表明，与穿制服的警察进行一次积极的接触就可以大大改善公众对警察的态度，包括对警察的合法性和合作意愿的看法。这些影响持续了长达 21 天，而且不限于在干预之前倾向于信任和与警察合作的个人。这项研究表明，积极的非执法接触可以改善公众对警察的态度，并表明警察部门将受益于更加注重促进积极的警民互动的策略。
