Rural policing in Scotland: measuring and improving public confidence, in Scottish Institute for Policing Research Annual Report for 2017/18

Abstract

Maintaining and improving public confidence is a key part of Policing Strategy 2026 (Police Scotland, 2017). The strategy notes that ‘public confidence [is] a key measure of our performance’ (p33) and that a ‘broader understanding of public confidence’ (p57) is vital for maintaining and improving policing (Police Scotland, 2017), highlighting the link between public confidence and broader legitimacy and accountability of policing. A range of academic literature also points to the importance of public confidence for understanding police legitimacy and accountability (Jackson et al., 2012; Tyler, 2004). Public confidence, is used as a key measure of how the police are perceived to be doing, with the Scottish Government releasing statistics annually on ‘confidence with the police’. The diverse geography of Scotland and local variation in policing styles makes it important to understand the variation in public confidence across different community types and different geographical locations.