ROI for Public Trust in the Police

In the July 27, 2023, episode of his podcast, Revisionist History, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell discusses what he calls “police procedurals,” which he describes as stories about the police in the popular culture media of novels, movies, and television. While nearly half of the podcast is devoted almost exclusively to this subject, Gladwell eventually reveals that the true purpose of his discussion is to identify the chief cause of falling homicide clearance rates, which according to the Council on Criminal Justice fell to 50 percent in 2020, down from 84 percent in 1976. Gladwell argues that the most important factor in clearance rates is the willing cooperation of the public, and for many reasons, the police have lost that. Professional arguments certainly exist regarding the value of clearance rates and the variables that influence them, but it would be hard to dismiss the significance of clearing a homicide, which makes an examination of any variable a worthy undertaking.

According to Gladwell, crime deterrence, including that for homicide, is “a function of the certainty, swiftness, and severity of punishment.” While there is debate among criminologists about how severe the punishment should be in this deterrence formula (see Lawrence Sherman’s Al Capone, the Sword of Damocles, and the Police–Corrections Budget Ratio), the research is clearer when it comes to certainty and swiftness (or celerity). For Gladwell, certainty is the key, positing that “deterrence is really a function of the likelihood of being caught.” When it comes to solving homicides, Gladwell makes the case that the likelihood of an offender being identified rests largely with the cooperation of the public, and to support his position, he refers the listener to the second of Peel’s Principles: to recognize always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

That the police need to earn and maintain the public trust should be a given for everyone in the policing profession. Research into police legitimacy strongly suggests that what should also be a given is that trust is enhanced when law enforcement agencies provide the public with an opportunity for input (or voice) into what problems the police are expected to solve and what solutions the police should use, including with whom the police should work, in what capacity, and to what extent. This is at the heart of what Barry Friedman calls democratic, or front-end, policing, which he defines as meaning that “the public has a voice in setting transparent, ethical, and effective policing policies and practices before the police or government act.” All police policy should be public policy, particularly when it comes to policy addressing crime and disorder. We don’t have to imagine a world where that isn’t the case. It exists now. That’s Gladwell’s point. He says that largely because of how the police are portrayed in popular culture, current and prospective police officers have been given “a picture of the profession that leaves out the most important element in their success- the people whose respect and support makes [effective] police work possible.” The result is a level of public mistrust sufficient to significantly interfere with the deterrence of crime.

Perhaps it is time for every law enforcement agency to have its own version of the Peelian Principles, principles which guide every aspect and function of the agency. At the top should be a principle that mandates public input into all policies and practices that will impact the public, or at the very least a principle that requires regular feedback from the public regarding police practices. At first glance this may sound daunting, as many public safety policies and practices result in some form of impact to the public, and it would be the height of bureaucratic inefficiency to hold public forums on each of these. While public input or feedback can take many forms, one of the most efficient options involves surveying the public. In Reinventing American Policing, Lum and Nagle note that while public surveys are not particularly novel, the most useful kind that “routinely, systematically, and rigorously survey citizens and their reactions to the police in general, to specific tactics they use or might use, and on daily interactions between police officers and citizens” are an uncommon practice. They go on to say that equally uncommon but perhaps even more important is regularly reporting the results to both the public and police officers. They write:

The purpose of feedback should not just be informational. The feedback should include change in police strategies and tactics made in light of polling information developed in conjunction with officers and citizens. Providing officers and managers with results also creates the feedback loops that Sherman (1998) argues are crucial to the implementation of evidence-based policing.

Creating these feedback loops can help demonstrate to the public that they have a voice in decisions made by the police, which is one of the foundational elements of procedural justice, and procedural justice helps to create police legitimacy. With police legitimacy comes public trust, and to Gladwell’s main point, public trust leads to public cooperation. The result is increased deterrence, lower crime, and safer communities. This is the true test of police efficiency according to Peel (and Gladwell)- the absence of crime and disorder rather than the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.