Examining Police Effectiveness as a Precursor to Legitimacy and Cooperation with Police

Numerous studies by Tyler and colleagues, as well as other scholars, support a normative, process model to account for variation in the public's cooperation with police in the USA and other developed nations. However, a recent study in Ghana suggests that in developing countries fraught with high levels of violent crime and corruption, cooperation may instead be accounted for by a utilitarian, rational-choice model. Our study examines whether public cooperation with police in the developing nation of Trinidad and Tobago is associated with the process model or rational-choice model. Using in-person structured interviews with residents, we examined whether victims' decisions to report to police were related to individuals' perceptions about police effectiveness or police legitimacy. We found support for the process model. We discuss possible explanations for the divergence with Tankebe's research in Ghana and suggest avenues for future research.