From Impressions to Intentions: Direct and Indirect Effects of Police Contact on Willingness to Report Crimes to Law Enforcement

• Author: Lee Ann Slocum,Andres F. Rengifo,Vijay Chillar
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0022427818817338
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

From Impressions

to Intentions: Direct

and Indirect Effects

of Police Contact on

Willingness to

Report Crimes to

Law Enforcement

Andres F. Rengifo

1

, Lee Ann Slocum

2

,

and Vijay Chillar

1

Abstract

Objectives: Crime reporting intentions have been associated with ratings of

police legitimacy and effectiveness. Less is known about the role of personal

encounters with police. We explore this issue by specifying associations

between reporting intentions and type of contact (involuntary/voluntary),

scope (cumulative/recent), and appraisal (respect/satisfaction with last

encounter). Methods: This study draws on surveys of young adults in New

York City (N¼508) and uses structural equation modeling to examine

correlates of crime reporting intentions. Results: Respondents with more

1

School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

2

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri St. Louis, St. Louis,

MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Andres F. Rengifo, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 123 Washington Street,

Newark, NJ 07102, USA.

Email: arengifo@rutgers.edu

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2019, Vol. 56(3) 412-450

ªThe Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0022427818817338

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stops are less willing to report, and this effect is both direct and indirect,

operating primarily via legitimacy. The association between reporting inten-

tions and variety of voluntary contacts is direct and positive. Negative

appraisals of recent stops are associated with lower reporting intentions

but only indirectly; feelings of disrespect in recent stops are mediated by

perceptions of legitimacy. Dissatisfaction with a recent voluntary contact is

related to negative views of police effectiveness, but effectiveness does not

shape reporting intentions. Instead, disrespectful voluntary contact has a

direct negative relationship with reporting attitudes. Conclusion: The results

underscore the importance of better-specifying contact with the police, as

reporting intentions and related perceptions of law enforcement vary

across experience and appraisal mechanisms.

Keywords

crime reporting, policing, police contact, procedural justice

In his classic book about policing, Al Reiss (1971) wrote that a civil society

depends on “complex” (p. 65) relationships of mutual support between

citizens and the police. These associations not only are marked by varying

patterns of lived experience and opinion, but also by fluid roles attributed to

each actor depending on the nature of specific encounters—from victims to

suspects or from informants to concerned citizens in the case of the public,

and for the police, as agents of support and reassurance or as bearers of

danger and suspicion (Maxfield 1988; Rios 2011; Skogan 2005). Th ese

contrasting and at times antagonistic roles and interactions underpin poli-

cing models from “zero tolerance” strategies that emphasize proactive law

enforcement to other “process-based” frameworks that focus on community

engagement (Lum and Nagin 2017).

In this article, we examine one key linkage between the police and the

public—the perceived willingness to report crimes—in the specific context

of a policing model marked by heightened social tension: order mainte-

nance in New York City. We consider the extent to which this individual-

level disposition varies across levels and types of personal contact with law

enforcement and their corresponding appraisal as well as across more gen-

eral perceptions of the police in terms of perceived legitimacy and effec-

tiveness. This is important because willingness to report crime is not only

one of several mechanisms that enables the mobilization of law as an

“immediate antecedent” of citizen behavior (Viki et al. 2006:288) and is

Rengifo et al. 413

the “lifeblood” of police work (Tankebe 2013:104), but more broadly it

reflects the “moral economy” (Fassin 2015:X) of formal and informal

resources for social control and their corresponding normative orientations

(Rosenfeld, Jacobs, and Wright 2003; Tyler and Huo 2002).

We seek to better specify the nature of these associations by focusing on

the role of police contact and perceptions of law enforcement in shaping

citizens’ willingness to call the police. Our work contributes to the growing

literature on community-police interactions in several ways. First, we

include a rich set of police encounters disaggregated by type (involuntary

or police-initiated and voluntary or citizen-initiated), scope (most recent vs.

cumulative experiences), and appraisal (perceived respect and satisfaction).

As noted by prior research, personal contact is of “central importance” for

understanding how people see the police (Bradford, Jackson, and Stanko

2009:20), yet most studies focus on discrete events—typically police-initi-

ated contact and the most recent stop or most memorable inter action—

neglecting the potential role of voluntary contacts and experiences over the

life course (Brunson and Miller 2006). Repeated calls have been made for

“more testing about which tactics create what effects” (Lum and Nag in

2017:366), including the need to explore “a wider range of involuntary and

voluntary contacts” (Augustyn 2016:277).

Second, our models and data allow us to contribute to several debates on

asymmetry in the effects of individual assessments of police contact on

perceptions of the police, the relative saliency of cumulative contacts as

compared to more recent, discrete events, and the specific contribution to

these models of the appraisal of specific encounters (Bradford et al. 2009;

Rosenbaum et al. 2005; Skogan 2006). This is important for policy as it may

allow police administrators to focus on reviewing specific contact types. It

is also important for research because more detailed information on the

appraisal process of personal experience can inform theory development

on the mechanisms of citizen compliance and cooperation.

We address these substantive areas by proposing a model of reporting

intentions that specifies direct and indirect associations with police encoun-

ters (see Figure 1). In particular, we argue that key cumulative experiences

of police contact—lifetime stops and variety of voluntary contacts—influ-

ence reporting intentions directly by shaping “longer-term orientations” of

cooperation with law enforcement (Murphy, Hinds, and Fleming

2008:138). Accumulated encounters also are expected to have an indirect

effect on reporting intentions via perceptions of police legitimacy and

effectiveness by reinforcing general dispositions toward law and authority

(Augustyn 2016; Bradford et al. 2009; Tyler, Fagan, and Geller 2014). In

414 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 56(3)