Legitimacy and Policing

Legitimacy is a prominent theme in the policing and national security arena that is important across a number of CEPS programs of research. With the UK National Policing Improvement Agency and George Mason University, researchers undertook a Campbell Collaboration systematic review (see www.campbellcollaboration.org) to assess the types of police interventions that best build citizen perceptions of legitimacy. The project team reviewed over 20,000 relevant research documents and used meta-analytic techniques to identify the best types of police interventions that facilitated citizen cooperation with police, trust in police and satisfaction. Building from the systematic review, CEPS researchers worked closely with the Queensland Police Service (QPS) to launch the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET) - the world’s first experimental trial to explore legitimacy and policing in a routine police-citizen encounter (random roadside breath tests).

About Campbell Systematic Reviews

The Campbell Collaboration (C2) helps people make well-informed decisions by preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews in education, crime and justice, and social welfare. The systematic reviews are published consecutively in a peer-reviewed monograph series called Campbell Systematic Reviews (ISSN: 1891-
1803), and are collected in the Campbell Library.
 

Professor Lorraine Mazerolle (Chief Investigator)

Dr Sarah Bennett (Research Fellow)

Ms Jacqueline Davis (Research Assistant)

Dr Matthew Manning (Project Collaborator)