Reforming the Police: Examining the Effect of Message Framing on Police Reform Policy Preferences

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/08874034231211259
• Author: Adam Dunbar,Peter A. Hanink
• Date: 01 December 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034231211259

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2023, Vol. 34(6) 534 –558

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034231211259

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Article

Reforming the Police:

Examining the Effect of

Message Framing on Police

Reform Policy Preferences

Adam Dunbar1 and Peter A. Hanink2

Abstract

Amid purported bipartisan support for police reform, legislation aimed at addressing

racial injustice has been met with public and political resistance. Public opinion research

provides minimal insight into this disjuncture. The current study found that while

varying the messaging about race and policing did not affect attitudes about police

reform, participant attitudes about race and policing were influential. Participants

who attributed racial disparities to structural discrimination and unconscious racial

biases indicated more support for reform than those who attributed disparities to

differential involvement in crime. Conversely, participants who believed that Blacks

themselves are to blame for racial disparities due to their greater criminal involvement

were less likely to support reforms that address inequities in policing. Overall, this

study highlights challenges for policymakers attempting to enact comprehensive

police reform.

Keywords

public opinion, police reform, race, experiment

High-profile killings by law enforcement over the past decade have contributed to

calls for police reform by policymakers and the public; these calls are inextricably

linked to race. For example, the killing of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in 2012,

inspired the creation of Black Lives Matter (BLM), a social movement that has become

1University of Nevada, Reno, USA

2California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA

Corresponding Author:

Adam Dunbar, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Reno, Ansari Business, Room 608,

Reno, NV 89557, USA.

Email: adamdunbar@unr.edu

1211259CJPXXX10.1177/08874034231211259Criminal Justice Policy ReviewDunbar and Hanink

research-article2023

Dunbar and Hanink 535

associated with police reform and condemnation of racialized police violence (Cobb,

2016). The 2014 killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in

New York City, and the civil unrest and protests that followed, directly prompted the

Department of Justice to investigate patterns of racialized policing in Ferguson and

President Obama to create the Taskforce on 21st Century Policing (Office of

Community Oriented Policing Services, 2015). The murder of George Floyd in May

2020 by a Minneapolis Police Department officer and the subsequent protests gave

renewed urgency to the decade-long call to reform policing.

Amid calls for reform by the public and policymakers, legislative efforts aimed at

addressing broader racial injustice have been met with public and political resistance.

For example, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aims to combat police

misconduct, excessive force, and racial bias in policing, stalled in the U.S. Senate

because of Republican opposition. Protests condemning racialized police violence and

calling for reforms have also been criticized by the public (Civiqs, 2020; Drakulich

et al., 2020). Media reports addressing racialized police violence are often met with

competing accounts that focus on justifying racial disparities in police use of force

(Lawrence, 2022).

One explanation for opposition to police reform efforts is that the policymakers and

the public debate the role race plays in policing. For example, BLM’s efforts to call

attention to racialized police violence were often minimized by critics who evoked

concerns about “Black on Black crime” (Mills, 2017) or explained the disproportion-

ate rates at which Blacks were killed by citing Blacks’ greater criminal involvement

(Riley, 2020). Thus, two competing narrative frames have arisen regarding police kill-

ings of Black men and women. One explains these killings as a manifestation of sys-

temic racism within policing institutions and a second explains police killings of Black

people as being a result of Black people’s own behavior.

Polarization regarding the role race plays in policing outcomes raises questions

about how these contrasting narrative frames affect attitudes about police reform,

including support or opposition to various reform policies. To address these questions,

we assess attitudes about a range of police reforms as well as willingness to fund the

police relative to other public services (e.g., public health or education). To determine

the malleability of these attitudes, we examine how the messaging around race and

policing affects support for various reform efforts. Overall, this study expands public

opinion research on policing, which typically focuses on police institutions rather than

on police reforms. In addition, it determines how message framing about race and

policing affects attitudes about police reform, which is critical as policymakers work

to enact police reform at federal and state levels.

In the remainder of the article, first, we survey public opinion research on policing,

paying particular attention to studies assessing attitudes about police reform. Second,

we briefly review the substantial literature on message framing, which can provide

insight regarding how messaging about the role of race in policing may affect policy

preferences. Third, we describe the methodological details of our study and key find-

ings from our analyses. Finally, we discuss the implications of the findings for efforts

to enact more comprehensive police reform.