Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2018

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Criminal Justice

Degree Program

Criminal Justice, PhD

Committee Chair

Higgins, George E.

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Vito, Gennaro F.

Committee Member

Vito, Gennaro F.

Committee Member

Campbell, Bradley A.

Committee Member

Richards, George

Author's Keywords

public confidence in the police; Caribbean; fear of crime; community cohesion; social problems; informal control

Abstract

This dissertation identifies public confidence in the police in contemporary policing, in particular among Caribbean countries. Law enforcement agencies in Caribbean countries have failed to earn confidence from the public. Citizens with a lower level of confidence in the police are unwilling to cooperate and support policing activities, making initiatives of law enforcement agencies difficult to achieve. In order to improve the public-police relationship in Caribbean countries, examinations of public confidence in the police are required. Researchers have developed two theoretical frameworks, the instrumental and expressive models, to explain key factors associated with public confidence in the police. In order to determine which models are convincing, this dissertation used the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Citizen Security Survey 2010 that was implemented between November 2010 and February 2011. The targeted population was residents in seven countries among the membership of Caribbean Commonwealth (CARICOM). The final sample size was 11,155 from the selected countries. Using this survey, this dissertation conducted Structural Equation Models (SEMs) with 18 observed items for 5 latent variables: public confidence in the police, community cohesion, social problems, informal control, and fear of crime. Findings from SEMs indicated that public confidence in the police was driven not only by actual crime or fear of crime, but also by non-criminal symbols, such as community cohesion, social problems, and informal control. In particular, this dissertation found that the effect of fear of crime as a mediating factor between public confidence in the police and non-criminal symbols was not significant. This finding was not in consistent with results of previous studies. In sum, findings in this dissertation provide several implications for solving the policing issue related to the public-police relationship. Law enforcement agencies in Caribbean countries should consider solutions to problems by non-criminal symbols to improve the public-police relationship, as well as strategies for preventing and controlling crime as police initiatives.

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