 Reconciling Police and Communities with Apologies, Acknowledgements, or Both: A Controlled ExperimentThomas C. O’Brien, Tracey L. Meares and Tom R. Tyler The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2020, vol. 687, issue 1, 202-215 Abstract: When police officers harm civilians, police leadership almost invariably makes a public statement about the incident, and these communications usually address issues of public mistrust in the police. In addressing public mistrust, political pressures may motivate police leadership to avoid acknowledging the role of police in creating that distrust. The study reported in this article examines the consequences of avoiding versus acknowledging responsibility for the role of police in creating mistrust, along with issuing an apology or not issuing an apology, in public statements. How do these various kinds of gestures shape public cooperation with police? This study reports on an experiment designed to answer that question, with our analysis focusing on the impact of these various kinds of statements on the people who are least likely to trust police. The evidence suggests that police leaders should combine acknowledgement of responsibility for the mistrust with an apology if they want to enlist the cooperation of people who are least likely to trust the police. Keywords: legitimacy; trust; intergroup apologies; conflict resolution; reconciliation; procedural justice (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:687:y:2020:i:1:p:202-215 Access Statistics for this article More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |
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