In the UK, the ability of the police to function effectively depends on the authority that they can command, rather than the force that they can deploy. It is therefore essential that police retain their image as the legitimate defenders of the British public. This can only be achieved through maintaining levels of public confidence in policing.
This thesis presents the analysis of a large-scale survey, designed to assess the perceptions of York residents towards crime, their local area, and the police. Structural Equation Modelling is used to assess the drivers of public confidence in York, and create a framework to understand the multiple interactions between the factors tested in the study, and the main dependent variable of public confidence. This framework is tested to evaluate whether there are differences within the city that affect how the public confidence framework functions.
Previous studies on the determinants of public confidence have mainly focused on locations outside the UK, used aggregated national data, or studied public confidence in large, metropolitan urban areas. No research has been carried out examining public confidence in an urban area with similar characteristics to York.
We contribute to knowledge by revealing the drivers of public confidence in the smaller urban area of York. We develop a public confidence framework that provides a holistic understanding of the nature of public confidence in York, showing that an understanding of the relationships between all factors in a public confidence model is essential if the true nature of this concept is to be understood. We demonstrate that even in a homogenous environment, differences in the overall framework of public confidence exist, depending on the perceptions people hold about their local area. Several potential strategies are presented to assist the North Yorkshire Police in improving levels of public confidence within York.
