Citation

Wozniak KH. Sociol. Forum 2016; 31(4): 1063-1082.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Eastern Sociological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/socf.12296

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

According to the theory of "ontological insecurity," people who worry that society is in a state of decline or upheaval will also support punitive social control of deviants. I test the relationship between several measures of people's anxiety about the state of society, their perception of racial tension, and their confidence in the police (as enforcers of social control) during the period of social unrest following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I use ordinary least squares regression to analyze data from a nationally representative public opinion poll gathered for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press during August, 2014. I find that pessimism about the state of the economy, pessimism about race relations, and the experience of personal hardship are related to decreased confidence in the police, while pessimism about the state of morals in society is related to increased confidence. I conclude that public confidence in the police is intertwined with public confidence in the stability of the country, more generally. This study supports a "neo-Durkheimian" model of policing. The opposite findings of economic versus moral insecurity also call for refinement of the ontological insecurity theory.

Language: en