Citizen Cooperation with the Police: Evidence from Contemporary Guatemala

• Published date: 01 June 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221139379
• Author: Elaine K. Denny,David A. Dow,Wayne Pitts,Erik Wibbels
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(7) 1072–1110

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221139379

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Citizen Cooperation with

the Police: Evidence from

Contemporary

Guatemala

Elaine K. Denny

1

, David A. Dow

2

, Wayne Pitts

3

, and

Erik Wibbels

4

Abstract

Community policing, and citizen cooperation with law enforcement more

broadly, can improve local security outcomes by providing decentralized

mechanisms for police accountability to local citizens. We hypothesize that

f‌ive factors—alignment of citizen/police interests, relative costs of cooper-

ation, costs of crime, prevalence of others’cooperation, and perceived police

eff‌icacy—comprise a decision framework that guides citizens’choices re-

garding whether to share information with law enforcement. We f‌ind evi-

dence for this framework using rich survey and survey experimental data from

a large nation-wide survey of Guatemalans and municipal administrative data.

Our results indicate that increasing police eff‌icacy, witness protection, and

neighborhood trust boost the odds of cooperation with police by up to 55%.

At a time when conversations about the relationship between community and

police are widespread, this research offers insights into conditions under

which cooperation between community members and law enforcement is

most likely to occur.

1

UC Merced, CA, USA

2

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

3

RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

4

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

David A. Dow, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, 115A Social

Sciences Building, 1145 E South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721-0027, USA.

Email: ddow@arizona.edu

Keywords

community policing, security, Guatemala, Latin America

Introduction

The f‌irst responsibility of modern states is the construction of order. While a

robust body of work on state building has emphasized the importance of

monopolizing military coercion (Tilly, 1992) and taxation (Levi, 1988),

“order”fundamentally depends on the nature of day-to-day interactions

between citizens and police. Police are local agents of the state’s monitoring

and enforcement capacities, and effective security provision relies on citizens’

willingness to cooperate with police by reporting crimes and providing in-

formation. Yet, individuals and communities vary widely in their willingness

to support the police and rely on them in promoting local order.

In this article, we seek to understand the conditions under which citizens

are more or less likely to cooperate with the police. Since cooperation between

citizens and law enforcement is a prerequisite for successful local order, we

provide insight into why this fundamental feature of states varies so widely

across individuals and communities. We do so by theorizing a decision-

making process whereby everyday citizens weigh whether or not to share

information with the police. We primarily focus on the logic that governs

citizens’decisions to provide information to investigators and report crimes to

the police. Drawing on a range of literature, we posit that citizens ask

themselves f‌ive questions. First, will the police act to protect and promote my

interests? A growing body of work underscores that under common condi-

tions, the interests of police forces and the communities they serve can diverge

sharply (e.g., see Davenport et al. (2011);Soss and Weaver (2017)). Second, if

I cooperate with the police—whether that be in reporting a crime or providing

information to investigators—will I be free from retribution by the criminals

themselves? We contend that perceptions of risk are a major determinant of

individuals’willingness to cooperate (Buckley et al., 2016). This risk of

reprisal can be conditioned by both features of the police, such as their ca-

pacity to protect witnesses or levels of corruption, and the community itself,

such as the extent of gang presence. Third, how much does crime affect my life

and my family? Existing work suggests that higher costs from crime vic-

timization can spur people to engage in participatory behaviors (Bateson,

2012) and crime reporting (Bowles et al., 2009). Building on this work, we

expect that when crime imposes signif‌icant direct costs on civilians, it in-

creases their incentives to cooperate with the police. Fourth, do my neighbors

cooperate with the police such that crimes will be widely reported and

community members benef‌it from group-wise protection for cooperating?

When one’s neighbors are also likely to cooperate with the police, it can send

Denny et al. 1073

the signal that cooperation is a norm and expected by the broader community

(Akerlof & Yellen, 1994;Asbury, 2011). In turn, there is often social pressure

for individuals not to cooperate in places with strong norms against providing

information to the police. Fifth and f‌inally, will my cooperation be eff‌icacious

and contribute to better security and policing outcomes? We expect that when

local police are perceived as effective, citizens are more likely to cooperate in

the expectation that doing so will lead to less crime in the future (Tankebe,

2009).

We test our expectations for this decision framework using a diverse, large

corpus of original observational, survey experimental, and administrative data

from Guatemala. Guatemala is a country where insecurity and the quality of

policing vary markedly by locality. While improving community cooperation

with the police has been a key focus of the nation’s security reforms, high rates

of crime and violence persist in some parts of the country. Also, Guatemalans’

trust of police is variable; according to LAPOP data 1 in 3 people trust police

in Guatemala, which is about the median value for Latin American countries.

1

We show that the incidence of that trust varies considerably across munic-

ipalities. Given the stark challenge of local order in many lower- and middle-

income countries, these circumstances make Guatemala a useful environment

for better understanding how citizens think about cooperating with the police

under diff‌icult security conditions and variable state capacity.

We f‌ind considerable evidence in favor of our decision framework. First,

using a conjoint experiment, we parse citizen decision-making as outlined in

the f‌ive questions above. Our results show that aligned interests/identity, the

prospects for retribution, the extent of community cooperation, and the ef-

f‌icacy of the police all bear on citizen decisions to cooperate. These results are

largely conf‌irmed in rich observational survey and administrative data, where

we f‌ind that a number of proxies of our key concepts—a shared identity,

provision of witness protection, neighborhood trust, and perceptions of police

eff‌icacy—increase reporting to law enforcement by up to 55%.

The impact of community characteristics, including the incidence of vi-

olence and the size of economic losses from crime, appears to affect coop-

eration less than the personal experiences and perceived risks described

above. Our conjoint experiment suggests general rates of crime and violence

matter less for choices about police cooperation. Personal costs of crime are

more strongly correlated with cooperation, particularly when accounting for

underlying perceptions of police legitimacy. Our observational data generally

show similar results. Thus, we f‌ind considerable evidence for our decision

theoretic approach to citizen-police cooperation and far less support for the

popular notion that the local criminal environment impacts cooperation.

All told, these f‌indings provide diverse evidence supportive of our the-

oretical framework: that everyday citizens make decisions on cooperating

with the police on the basis of key features of the police themselves, the

1074 Comparative Political Studies 56(7)