Steve Pickering, Han Dorussen, Martin Ejnar Hansen, Jason Reifler, Thomas
Scotto, Yosuke Sunahara & Dorothy Yen.
ABSTRACT
Following a series of high-profile incidents of violence against women by serving London Metropolitan Police Officers, questions of standards and the public’s confidence in policing are in the spotlight. Over a fifteen-month period between July 2022 and September 2023 using monthly surveys of representative English samples, this study confirms that women, in general, are more trusting in the police than men. This, however, does not hold true in London. Out of nine regions in England, London is the only region where women’s overall trust in the police is lower than men. Lower levels of trust in the police among women in London hold when controls for age, income, political environment, and crime levels are considered. In line with existing literature that considers women being more sensitive to cues about trustworthiness, the concerning incidents of sexual violence by police officers against women are likely to further erode trust in police in the capital, which already ranks last among England’s nine regions in citizen trust of the police.
Statement on ethics approval:
Approval was granted for this study to be carried out by the College of Business, Arts and Social Science Research Ethics Committee, Brunel University London. Approval reference: 35290-LR-Jan/2022-37313-1.
KEYWORDS: Police, Trust, Gender, London
INTRODUCTION
In early 2021, Sarah Everard disappeared from a walk home after a night out. Soon after her body was discovered, the perpetrator of her rape and murder was found to be a serving police officer in the Metropolitan police. The trial encouraged another woman who was tortured and raped by another serving Met officer to come forward, leading to his conviction. At the time of writing, over 1000 Metropolitan police officers are suspended or on restricted duties for allegations including violence against women and girls, sexual violence and domestic violence (BBC Citation2023).
According to the Peelian principles upon which the Metropolitan police force is based, policing depends on consent and the avoidance of physical force. Yet at a vigil held for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common, Metropolitan police officers handcuffed and arrested four women for alleged violations of COVID-19 restrictions. This heavy-handed reaction was one incident among many that brought into question the very foundation on which policing in London was built: trust.
Trust in key institutions such as the police is critical. Levi and Stoker (Citation2000) argue that trust is relational with an individual making themselves vulnerable to an institution with the capability to do them harm. Trust overall is not unconditional and can be divided into different categories, most notably generalised and specific trust (Freitag and Bühlmann Citation2009, Freitag and Traunmüller Citation2009). Generalised trust is strongly related to desirable outcomes, both in terms of democracy (e.g. Knack Citation2002, Tavits Citation2006, Sønderskov Citation2008, Zmerli and Newton Citation2008) and economy (e.g. Knack and Keefer Citation1997, Uslaner Citation2002). Specific trust is based on a judgement of the situation, is based on previous experience and can vary depending on outside events (Levi and Stoker Citation2000). In this article, we ask a simple question: what factors influence respondents’ specific trust in policing in England and in London specifically?
The role of trust in policing in London runs deep. London’s Metropolitan Police force was created by an Act of Parliament in 1829, and the Home Office states that from that year on, every new police officer was issued with a list of nine ‘General Instructions’ in which trust play an integral part.Footnote1 Inherent in these are the ideas: that the power of the police depends on public approval; that the police need the willing cooperation of the public; that cooperation diminishes proportionately with the use of force; and that the police should offer friendship equally to all. The rape and murder of Sarah Everard, and the subsequent arrest of women at a vigil in her memory profoundly challenge these key precepts upon which policing in London is built.
In the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder, a review into the standards and behaviour of the Metropolitan Police Service was commissioned, conducted by Baroness Casey. It found that ‘far too many Londoners have now lost faith in policing’ (Casey Citation2023, p. 8). The review went on to find that public trust in the Met fell from 89% in 2016 to a low of 66% in March 2022 (Casey Citation2023, p. 10). The Casey review highlights that there are systematic and fundamental problems in how policing in the capital of the United Kingdom is run and how its residents and notably its women has been left behind by an organisation that lacks accountability, transparency and above all, trust (Casey Citation2023). Using a survey of multiple waves of over 8000 combined respondents conducted from July 2022 to September 2023, we find that in the parts of England outside of London, only 44% of women trust the police. However, when we look at London itself, this figure drops to 34%. In other words, Baroness Casey’s scathing assessment of the Metropolitan Police Force probably overstates levels of trust in the police. Across England, the region with lowest levels of trust in the police is London. Furthermore, while women generally trust the police more than men do, we find that this is the opposite in London. The critiques raised against English police forces, and especially the Metropolitan police, are linked to officers breaking the law and engaging in heinous crimes which have become occurrences that too often reach the front pages of the newspapers. While negative press for parts of the police force is nothing new, the scope of the problem has meant that there is a scepticism, if not outright distrust, towards the police and policing among groups in British society today. This creates a general problem for a public institution depending on trust to perform duties central to the functioning of society equally across all sub-groups. However, given that policing performance is to some extent dependent on local factors, not least through the police and crime commissioners and mayors having an impact on policing in their constabularies, there is a puzzle to solve, namely, to what extent there is a difference in trust towards the police depending on geography and socio-economic factors.
Our findings on specific trust in the police suggest that respondents who are older have higher levels of trust in the police, while ethnic minority respondents have significantly lower levels of trust. In general, the main effect of being a woman has a positive relationship with trust in the police. But this relationship breaks down with policing in London, where trust in the police among women is lower than anywhere else in the country and is significantly lower than among men. Our findings are robust when controlling for various factors, such as the burglary and violent crime rates in the constituency and the level of support for the Conservative party. When controlling for the impact of generalised trust, our findings remain the same. Overall, our results suggest that there is significant work ahead for police forces generally in England with regards to restoring trust in the police among ethnic minority citizens and in London especially also among women. These results are evidence that this is a serious challenge to the basic principles underpinning the police. For such a central societal institution, this may necessitate stronger focus by the government.