Police perceptions of prejudice: how police awareness training influences the capacity of police to assess prejudiced motivated crime

View/ Open
File version
Accepted Manuscript (AM)
Author(s)
Miles-Johnson, Toby
Mazerolle, Lorraine
Pickering, Sharon
Smith, Paul
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Prejudice motivated crime (PMC) is defined as crimes motivated by bias, prejudice or hatred towards members of particular groups, communities and individuals. To understand how police awareness training facilitates or constrains the capacity of police officers to appropriately classify and respond to PMC, data were collected from a population of Police Recruits (PRs) and Protective Service Officers (PSOs) (N = 1609) to ascertain their perceptions of PMC pre- and post-PMC awareness training. These were used in a logistic regression model to identify factors explaining whether PRs and PSOs would identify a vignette/scenario ...
View more >Prejudice motivated crime (PMC) is defined as crimes motivated by bias, prejudice or hatred towards members of particular groups, communities and individuals. To understand how police awareness training facilitates or constrains the capacity of police officers to appropriately classify and respond to PMC, data were collected from a population of Police Recruits (PRs) and Protective Service Officers (PSOs) (N = 1609) to ascertain their perceptions of PMC pre- and post-PMC awareness training. These were used in a logistic regression model to identify factors explaining whether PRs and PSOs would identify a vignette/scenario as a PMC. We found PRs and PSOs were more likely to correctly identify a PMC scenario than a control scenario, but only 61% as likely to identify an incident as PMC post-PMC awareness training after accounting for other variables. We argue that awareness training programmes need to be more aligned to the specific needs of policing in diverse societies.
View less >
View more >Prejudice motivated crime (PMC) is defined as crimes motivated by bias, prejudice or hatred towards members of particular groups, communities and individuals. To understand how police awareness training facilitates or constrains the capacity of police officers to appropriately classify and respond to PMC, data were collected from a population of Police Recruits (PRs) and Protective Service Officers (PSOs) (N = 1609) to ascertain their perceptions of PMC pre- and post-PMC awareness training. These were used in a logistic regression model to identify factors explaining whether PRs and PSOs would identify a vignette/scenario as a PMC. We found PRs and PSOs were more likely to correctly identify a PMC scenario than a control scenario, but only 61% as likely to identify an incident as PMC post-PMC awareness training after accounting for other variables. We argue that awareness training programmes need to be more aligned to the specific needs of policing in diverse societies.
View less >
Journal Title
POLICING & SOCIETY
Volume
28
Issue
6
Copyright Statement
© 2018 Taylor & Francis (Routledge). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Policing and Society on 05 Jul 2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2016.1206099
Subject
Criminology
Policy and Administration
Social Work