Factors Affecting Trust in the Police: Age of Past Experiences with the Police and Future Expectations of Police Violence Victimization

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine how the age and quality of police encounters might influence trust in the police and future expectations of police violence victimization. A mix-methods approach was utilized, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Adult participants were asked to retrospectively recall their most memorable childhood police encounters, most memorable adult police encounters, and perceptions of how these past experiences may have influenced their trust in police and tendency to predict police behavior in the future. Using models of police trust as a theoretical framework, another objective of the study was to determine the characteristics of positive and negative police encounters, which were respectively operationalized as high-quality and low-quality in nature. Results indicated that the age when children experience police encounters and the quality of those encounters were very impactful, and younger children who experienced negative police encounters have an increased likelihood of expecting to be victimized by the police when they are adults. The quality of the police encounters emerged as the most influential factor when determining predictors of childhood trust, adult trust, and expectations of future violence victimization at the hands of the police.