Can Police Legitimacy Promote Collective Efficacy?

2011/03/30 by Tammy Rinehart Kochel · 1 citation
Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Crime Patterns and Interventions #Policing Practices and Perceptions #Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

paper · doi:10.1080/07418825.2011.561805

openalex publication_date 2011/03/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

This research empirically examines the role of police in promoting collective efficacy and in particular, whether higher levels of police legitimacy are associated with more neighborhood collective efficacy. The research is conducted in the developing nation of Trinidad and Tobago—providing important evidence about the generalizability of the antecedents and effects of legitimacy outside of industrialized nations. The results support a potential role for police in promoting collective efficacy, but the mechanism for doing so is not legal institution legitimacy. Instead, the research identifies a relationship between quality routine police services, levels of police misconduct, and collective efficacy. In Trinidad, the amount and nature of interactions with police appear to play an important part in residents’ and neighborhood‐level assessments about police services and misbehavior.

Citations

• Scale Reliability, Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha, and Violations of Essential Tau-Equivalence with Fixed Congeneric Components
• NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGES IN ECOLOGY AND VIOLENCE*
• The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing
• Experience, quality of life, and neighborhood context: A hierarchical analysis of satisfaction with police
• 1. Ecometrics: Toward a Science of Assessing Ecological Settings, with Application to the Systematic Social Observation of Neighborhoods
• Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences
• USING THE CORRECT STATISTICAL TEST FOR THE EQUALITY OF REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS
• Public Confidence in Policing
• Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods

Cited by

• Police legitimacy [wikipedia]

Related

• Viewing Things Differently: The Dimensions of Public Perceptions of Police Legitimacy
• The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing
• Fair Process, Trust, and Cooperation: Moving Toward an Integrated Framework of Police Legitimacy
• Legal cynicism, intrusive policing, and the dynamics of police legitimacy: evidence from Brazil’s largest city
• A field experiment on community policing and police legitimacy