Trust in police forces: perception of residents and challenges for public administration

Abstract

Based on available evidence that points to the importance of the population’s trust in police forces, emphasizing the decisive role of such trust for the efficiency of policing work and for the very adherence of citizens to the law, the paper analyzes the results of a victimization survey conducted in Porto Alegre in 2017, drawing particularly on results regarding the residents' perception of the work of the Military Police and the Civil Police. Data analysis shows low trust rates for both state polices, with the Police Trust Indicator reaching 49,2% for the Military Police and 53,7% for the Civil Police. The lowest rates of trust in the police are concentrated among younger and poorer populations. In the case of the Military Police, a statistically significant difference was also found for lower trust among the Afro-descendant population, which suggests different patterns of performance in the same city, depending on the social groups addressed or served by the corporations. Finally, we propose some guidelines that can help in the process of defining specific policies capable of increasing public confidence in police institutions.

Keywords
Trust in police forces; Procedural justice; Police legitimacy and efficiency