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

Published date01 December 2023
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/08874034231211259
AuthorAdam Dunbar,Peter A. Hanink
Date01 December 2023
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.

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