ABSTRACT

Ethnic minority officers continue to be underrepresented across UK police forces. Further, some ethnic minority groups consistently report lower levels of confidence in police compared to their White British counterparts. Although there is consensus that a more ethnically representative police service is a good idea, there is limited evidence in the UK on how the public perceives officers of different ethnic appearance, and how this relates to trust, confidence and legitimacy. This paper presents findings from an online experiment (n = 260) exploring how ethnic appearance affects perceptions of police. Our findings offer rare empirical support for a more ethnically representative police force. First, across respondents, we found that Black officers were perceived significantly more favourably than White or Asian officers. Second, we found that Black respondents had more negative responses to White officers, yet there was little evidence that Black officers elicited more negative reactions from White or Asian respondents. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

摘要

少数族裔警察在英国警察部队中的代表性仍然不足。此外，与白人英国同行相比，一些少数族裔群体一直表示对警察的信心较低。尽管人们一致认为更具种族代表性的警察服务是个好主意，但在英国，关于公众如何看待不同种族外貌的警官，以及这与信任、信心和合法性有何关系的证据有限。本文介绍了一项在线实验 ( n = 260）探索种族外观如何影响对警察的看法。我们的研究结果为更具种族代表性的警察部队提供了罕见的实证支持。首先，在受访者中，我们发现黑人军官明显比白人或亚裔军官更受欢迎。其次，我们发现黑人受访者对白人官员的负面反应更多，但几乎没有证据表明黑人官员会引起白人或亚裔受访者更多的负面反应。我们讨论了研究结果的理论和实践意义。