Does Place Shape Perceptions of the Police? A Comparison of University Students and Community Members

Abstract

There is a long-standing criticism that attendance at universities liberalizes students and that students’ perceptions of the justice system differ greatly from their community counterparts. We test that proposition by comparing the results of surveys about the local police from random samples of community members and convenience samples of university undergraduate collected in 2011 and 2013 (N = 1,544). The community respondents rated the police service more favourably in terms of performance, but both community members and undergraduate students held similar perceptions of police professionalism. Our results reveal that perceptions toward the police are the result of a complex interplay of contextual and demographic factors in addition to university attendance. The implications of our findings for investigators using university students to reflect community sentiments about policing are discussed, especially in terms of how place shapes these students’ perceptions.