Public confidence in policing has become an important issue in the UK. The police rely on legitimacy and public support, and initiatives to improve levels of confidence are currently underway. The point of contact between citizens and officers is vital in any such endeavour. But how are encounters judged and how important for public confidence are assessments of the quality of contacts? We draw upon data from the 2005/2006 Metropolitan Police Public Attitudes Survey to answer these questions. We test Skogan's (2006) finding that personal contact has a largely negative impact on confidence; we demonstrate that unsatisfactory contacts are indeed associated with less favourable opinions about police effectiveness, fairness and engagement with the community. Yet consistent with the procedural justice model we also show that positively received contacts can improve perceptions of fairness and community engagement. Moreover, seeing regular police patrols and feeling informed about police activities are associat...

Contact and confidence: revisiting the impact of public encounters with the police

Positivity, or the experimental treatment assignment assumption, requires that there be both exposed and unexposed participants at every combination of the values of the observed confounders in the population under study. Positivity is essential for inference but is often overlooked in practice by epidemiologists. This issue of the Journal includes 2 articles featuring discussions related to positivity. Here the authors define positivity, distinguish between deterministic and random positivity, and discuss the 2 relevant papers in this issue. In addition, the commentators illustrate positivity in simple 2 × 2 tables, as well as detail some ways in which epidemiologists may examine their data for nonpositivity and deal with violations of positivity in practice.

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Invited Commentary: Positivity in Practice

The Research, Development and Statistics Directorate exists to improve policy making, decision taking and practice in support of the Home Office purpose and aims, to provide the public and Parliament with information necessar y for informed debate and to publish information for future use.

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Home Office Statistical Bulletin

Police forces in England and Wales in recent years have attempted to improve the ways in which they communicate. This results from a number of converging pressures that include technological media developments and government and public pressures to provide reassuring policing services. The same media developments have had consequences for news organisations and their processes and practices of news gathering. In this context, the paper examines recent developments in police non-operational communications, explores the current dynamics of the relationship between crime reporters and their police sources and considers the implications for the ‘shaping’ of policing and crime news. Although the paper provides an examination of contemporary police–media relations, it also looks back to the work of Steve Chibnall whose 1970s research benchmarked police–media relations. Drawing on a national survey of police forces, together with data gathered from interviews with crime reporters and police communications manage...

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Police corporate communications, crime reporting and the shaping of policing news

Public trust and confidence are vital to the police function. There has been much comment and debate about the apparent decline in confidence in the British police since the 1950s, most frequently evidenced by data from the British Crime Survey (BCS). Yet, there has been relatively little in-depth interrogation of the data at the heart of the discussion. Pooling data from 11 sweeps of the BCS (1984 to 2005/06), this paper shows a homogenization over time in trends in trust and confidence and experiences of encounters with the police. This pattern is found across both age and ethnicity, and can also be identified in other variables. The story that emerges therefore differs from analyses that emphasize the increasingly diffuse and variable nature of public experiences of the police.

Convergence, Not Divergence?: Trends and Trajectories in Public Contact and Confidence in the Police

Crime has been a major focus for the government over the past decade, with a raft of new legislation implemented since 1997. And this has given people a lot of what they asked for-there are more police and they are more visible, sentencing is tougher and there are more people in prison. Overall, crime has fallen significantly. But there are major gaps between these measurable facts and public perception. In particular the public still thinks that crime rates are soaring and the personal safety has declined-and they blame the government. This is a serious challenge, as we know that rating of competence on dealing with crime is a key driver of overall views of government, as well as citizens' quality of life. This report explores why the gap between actual crime and the perception of crime exists and considers what the government can do to improve public perceptions. Some issues are driven by the media and are beyond government control, but there are significant actions they can take. This is a particularly appropriate time to pull together our extensive evidence, given that the Home Secretary has published a new crime strategy, Sir Ronnie Flanagan has produced the report from his review of policing, and work is underway in government to build confidence and reduce fear of crime in local communities.

Tamara Burrows

Papers

Closing the gaps-crime and public perceptions