Communicating Reform: Testing an Apology for Police History as a Supplement to a Policy Communication

• Author: Mark Benton
• DOI: 10.1177/02750740211048887
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Communicating Reform: Testing an

Apology for Police History as a

Supplement to a Policy Communication

Mark Benton

Abstract

Policing in the United States has a racist history, with negative implications for its legitimacy among African Americans today.

Legitimacy is important for policing’s effective operations. Community policing may improve policing’s legitimacy but is

difficult to implement with fidelity and does not address history. An apology for policing’s racist history may work as a

legitimizing supplement to community policing. On the other hand, an apology may be interpreted as words without changes

in practices. Using a survey vignette experiment on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to sample African Ameri cans, this research

tests the legitimizing effect of a supplemental apology for historical police racism during a community policing policy

announcement. Statistical findings suggest that supplementing the communication with an apology imparted little to no

additional legitimacy on policing among respondents. Qualitative data suggested a rationale: Apologies need not indicate

future equitable behavior or policy implementation, with implementation itself seeming crucial for police legitimacy

improvements.

Keywords

policing, apologia, governing, police legitimacy, experiments

Introduction

Governments sometimes apologize for their mistakes, but

apologies do not always make governments more legitimate.

Policing in the United States has a racist history that creates

legitimacy problems among African Americans today. This

research finds that supplementing a community policing

announcement with an apology for historical police racism

is unlikely to substantially improve policing’s legitimacy

among African Americans. These findings suggest that

improving police legitimacy among African Americans

may require more concrete policy implementation.

In the Southern United States, the earliest police depart-

ments formed to police slaves (Turner et al., 2006). These

slave patrols monitored slaves’activities, checked freed

Blacks for documents to ensure that they were not slaves,

caught runaways, and prevented gatherings (Durr, 2015).

Slave patrols were an important part of legal systems that

maintained slavery (Lee & Robinson, 2019; Spruill, 2016).

Police departments maintained their role of racial control

after the American Civil War (Steffens, 2018; Wade,

1996). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans

feared urbanization and organized police departments

formed to maintain the racial status quo (Potter, 2013).

Officers enforced segregation and tolerated crimes that

were committed to maintain racial hierarchies (English,

2009). Officers sometimes participated in lynchings and

departments often did nothing to prevent racial violence

(Fischer-Stewart, 2017; King, 2011; Teague, 2019).

During America’s civil rights movement, as African

American activists and their allies argued for equality,

police officers sprayed them with fire hoses. Police abused

icons like Martin Luther King Jr. (Andrews & Gaby,

2015). National media shared images of protests and they

spread across the country. Police departments became

emblematic of racial conflict in the United States (Corrigan,

2017; Rafail et al., 2012; Spratt, 2008). Recent movements

(Blessett, 2017; Moore, 2018) against police racism illustrate

policing’s ongoing legitimacy problem among African

Americans.

Improving police legitimacy today may require addressing

historical misdeeds. Apologia, the study and practice of

effective apologizing (Ware & Linkugel, 1973), is one

University of Missouri, Columbia—Harry S. TrumanSchool of Government

and Public Affairs, Columbia, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mark Benton, University of Missouri, Columbia—Harry S. TrumanSchool of

Government and Public Affairs, 907 University Ave., Columbia, MO 65202,

USA.

Email: mbenton@mail.missouri.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2022, Vol. 52(1) 46–60

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740211048887

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