{"id":4930,"date":"2016-10-26T14:31:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T18:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=4930"},"modified":"2019-03-26T14:41:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T18:41:17","slug":"respect-versus-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/26\/respect-versus-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t confuse respect for police with confidence in them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nGood <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/196610\/americans-respect-police-surges.aspx\" >news from Gallup<\/a> this week that &#8220;surging&#8221; numbers of Americans respect the police needs a gentle reminder that this is only a small part of the picture.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nGallup asks Americans two similar-sounding questions about attitudes towards police every year that get very different responses. In the fall, Gallup&#8217;s poll asks about respect specifically for local police; in the summer, another question asks about confidence in the police as an institution in American society.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe positive responses <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2016\/10\/25\/american-respect-for-police-reaches-highest-level-in-50-years\/\" >reported<\/a> this week were for the question &#8220;How much respect do you have for the police in your area?&#8221; <span class=\"pullquote\" title=\"Americans' respect for local police is much higher than their confidence in the police in general.\">Americans&#8217; respect for local police is apparently much higher than their confidence in the police in general.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLast year, the Prison Policy Initiative&#8217;s Rachel Gandy <a href=\"\/blog\/2015\/07\/02\/police_confidence\/\" >charted confidence in the police<\/a>, which showed that in 2015, just 52% of Americans had &#8220;a great deal&#8221; or &#8220;quite a lot&#8221; of confidence in the police as an institution in American society. This June, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/192701\/confidence-police-recovers-last-year-low.aspx\" >Gallup reported<\/a> that confidence went up only 4% from last year&#8217;s 22-year low, and just &#8220;a slim majority of Americans have confidence in the police as an institution.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>\nJesse Walker on <i>Reason.com<\/i> offers a quick analysis of <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/24\/american-respect-for-police-hits-a-48-ye\">cultural conditions<\/a> in 2016 that may account for the increase in respect for police, and points out the important differences between the measures of respect and confidence.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMost obviously, when Gallup asks about respect for police, it asks about local police, who may be familiar faces to many Americans &#8211; even neighbors and relatives on the force. This question also comes at a time when the memories of the shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge are still fresh. Respect for police is a given. It dominates presidential debates and is a common refrain used to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/07\/11\/politics\/rudy-giuliani-black-lives-matter-inherently-racist\/\" >denounce<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.memphisdailynews.com\/news\/2016\/sep\/9\/good-cops-greater-than-all-quarterbacks\/\" >critics<\/a> of police brutality.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOf course Americans respect the police. But do they trust them? That is the question of <a href=\"\/blog\/2015\/07\/02\/police_confidence\/\" >confidence<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Americans\u2019 respect for local police is apparently much higher than their confidence in the police in general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[36],"class_list":["post-4930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-briefings","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8475,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions\/8475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}