IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v10y2021i2p70-d498017.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Policing Minority Communities: How Perception of Engagement and Level of “Awareness” Influence Officer Attitudes toward Practice

Author

Listed:
  • Toby Miles-Johnson

    (School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Level 5, X Block, Gardens Point, 2 George St, Brisbane 4001, Australia)

  • Suzanna Fay

    (School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Michie Building 9, St Lucia, Brisbane 4072, Australia)

  • Susann Wiedlitzka

    (School of Social Sciences, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand)

Abstract

In the 21st century, policing of all citizens requires officers to have an increased awareness of minority communities. Yet in the wake of public complaints and mass demonstrations regarding police misconduct, it is clear that police bias toward minority communities often negatively influences engagement. To better understand police awareness of minority communities and how officers’ levels of awareness and perceptions of policing influence their perceptions of engagement, data were collected from police recruits and protective service officers ( N = 1585) training at one of the largest police academies in Australia. The results show significant differences in awareness levels and perceptions of engagement of police recruits and protective service officers toward members of minority communities, as well as the factors influencing awareness during police–citizen engagement. These include the police recruit’s and protective service officer’s gender and sexuality, the frequency of socialization they have with diverse people, as well as the type of social interaction experienced. The results from this study offer suggestions to increase officers’ levels of awareness of minority communities, and how this may improve on-the-job performance overtime.

Suggested Citation

  • Toby Miles-Johnson & Suzanna Fay & Susann Wiedlitzka, 2021. "Policing Minority Communities: How Perception of Engagement and Level of “Awareness” Influence Officer Attitudes toward Practice," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-23, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:70-:d:498017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/70/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/2/70/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dai, Mengyan & Frank, James & Sun, Ivan, 2011. "Procedural justice during police-citizen encounters: The effects of process-based policing on citizen compliance and demeanor," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 159-168, March.
    2. Weitzer, Ronald, 2000. "White, black, or blue cops? Race and citizen assessments of police officers," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 313-324.
    3. Dai, Mengyan & Frank, James & Sun, Ivan, 2011. "Procedural justice during police-citizen encounters: The effects of process-based policing on citizen compliance and demeanor," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 159-168.
    4. Paoline, Eugene A., 2003. "Taking stock: Toward a richer understanding of police culture," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 199-214.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Toby Miles-Johnson & Suzanna Fay, 2022. "“Being Diverse and Being Included, Don’t Go Together in Policing”—Diversity, Inclusion, and Australian Constables," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-19, June.
    2. Toby Miles-Johnson & Kate Linklater, 2022. "‘Rorting the System’: Police Detectives, Diversity, and Workplace Advantage," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-20, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xiaochen Hu & Xudong Zhang & Nicholas Lovrich, 2021. "Public perceptions of police behavior during traffic stops: logistic regression and machine learning approaches compared," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 355-380, May.
    2. Augustyn, Megan Bears & Ray, James V., 2016. "Psychopathy and perceptions of procedural justice," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 170-183.
    3. Gau, Jacinta M., 2011. "The Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy: An Empirical Test of Core Theoretical Propositions," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 489-498.
    4. Toby Miles-Johnson & Kate Linklater, 2022. "‘Rorting the System’: Police Detectives, Diversity, and Workplace Advantage," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-20, April.
    5. Gary Rothwell & J. Baldwin, 2007. "Ethical Climate Theory, Whistle-blowing, and the Code of Silence in Police Agencies in the State of Georgia," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 341-361, February.
    6. Huebner, Beth M. & Schafer, Joseph A. & Bynum, Timothy S., 2004. "African American and White perceptions of police services: Within- and between-group variation," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 123-135.
    7. Novak, Kenneth J. & Alarid, Leanne Fiftal & Lucas, Wayne L., 2003. "Exploring officers' acceptance of community policing: Implications for policy implementation," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 57-71.
    8. Koen, Marthinus C. & Newell, Bryce Clayton & Roberts, Melinda R., 2021. "Body-worn cameras: Technological frames and project abandonment," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    9. Seung-Yeop Paek & Mahesh K. Nalla & Yong-Tae Chun & Julak Lee, 2021. "The Perceived Importance of Cybercrime Control among Police Officers: Implications for Combatting Industrial Espionage," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-10, April.
    10. Weitzer, Ronald, 2002. "Incidents of police misconduct and public opinion," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 397-408.
    11. Sobol, James J., 2010. "Social ecology and police discretion: The influence of district crime, cynicism, and workload on the vigor of police response," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 481-488, July.
    12. Koslicki, Wendy M. & Willits, Dale W. & Brooks, Rachael, 2021. "Fatal outcomes of militarization: Re-examining the relationship between the 1033 Program and police deadly force," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    13. Koslicki, Wendy M., 2022. "Recruiting the warrior cop: Assessing predictors of highly militarized recruitment videos," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Kate Linklater, 2022. "Inclusion Capital: How Police Officers Are Included in Their Workplaces," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-19, September.
    15. Samar Ben Romdhane & Alain Babineau, 2023. "Beyond Reputation Management: An Auto-Ethnographic Examination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Canadian Policing," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-15, September.
    16. Ingram, Jason R. & Terrill, William, 2014. "Relational demography and officer occupational attitudes: The influence of workgroup context," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 309-320.
    17. Mourtgos, Scott M. & Adams, Ian T., 2019. "The rhetoric of de-policing: Evaluating open-ended survey responses from police officers with machine learning-based structural topic modeling," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-1.
    18. Bishopp, Stephen A. & Boots, Denise Paquette, 2014. "General strain theory, exposure to violence, and suicide ideation among police officers: A gendered approach," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 538-548.
    19. Lundman, Richard J., 2009. "Officer gender and traffic ticket decisions: Police blue or women too?," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 342-352, July.
    20. Marilyn D Thomas & Alexis N Reeves & Nicholas P Jewell & Eli K Michaels & Amani M Allen, 2021. "US law enforcement policy predictors of race-specific police fatalities during 2015–16," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-17, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:2:p:70-:d:498017. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.