“This book should be made a part of any college level library that features holdings in social sciences. … Americans View Crime and Justice presents a national public opinion survey and its results on the issues. These edited results of a survey conducted in 1995 examine such issues as gun control, capital punishment, and juvenile crime, offering public opinion along with the analyses of a panel of criminologists.” –The Midwest Book Review Readable and carefully edited, Americans View Crime and Justice reports and analyzes results from the recent National Crime and Justice Survey (NCJS), the richest and most wide-ranging investigation of public opinion on crime and justice issues in more than a decade. Conducted in June 1995, the survey features responses from 1,000 adults in the United States on now-volatile issues such as fear of crime, gun control, capital punishment, juvenile crime, and additional related topics of national concern. A distinguished panel of criminologists analyzes the collected data in this volume to present a comprehensive report on the development and current status of public opinion on these timely issues. Divided into three sectionscontext and framework; findings; and opinion, policy, and science—this authoritative volume also analyzes the implications of the survey data. Providing interesting insights and timely quantification of Americans' view of crime and justice, this volume offers a unique view of public opinion particularly important to the work of researchers, law enforcement personnel, policy makers, public officials, and students of criminology and criminal justice, law, and political science.

Support and Confidence: Public Attitudes Toward the Police

Support and Confidence: Public Attitudes Toward the Police

Support and confidence: Public attitudes toward the police
WilsonW.S.Huang
MichaelS.Vaughn

Law enforcement agencies need a cooperative citizenry to ensure effective police work because of the reciprocal nature of police-public interaction. This fact has been known since the time of Sir Robert Peel, who said that the “police are the public and the public are the police.” Criminal justice researchers call this phenomenon the co-production of police services, meaning that there is a symbiotic relationship between the police and the public (Bayley & Skolnick, 1986; Reiss, 1971). Indeed, Reiss (1971) reported that 87% of police-citizen encounters involved police responding to citizen calls for service, and Black (1970) found that over three fourths of police activities were generated by citizen calls for ...

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