What is it about?
Research finds that the public generally supports the use of Body-Worn Cameras (BWC) by police. Much of the support for BWCs is attributed to the technology’s ability to promote police accountability and enhance perceptions of law enforcement transparency, while also providing support to uniformed personnel. However, we do not really know why the public supports BWC usage by police because research on the technology’s potential benefits and related deployment issues is still in its infancy. The few studies that have sought to unravel the predictors of public support for BWC have focused their attention on the benefits the public perceives will accompany the use of BWC to the virtual exclusion of the concerns they may have with the technology. Using survey data collected from 431 residents of a mid-size city in Southern California, this study expands our knowledge of the influences of public support for BWC by including a comprehensive measure of the public’s perceived concerns, including privacy, cost, technology limitations, and the possible manipulation of BWC footage. Findings revealed that public support was significantly influenced by respondents’ perceived benefits and their perceived concerns about BWC, while controlling for demographic characteristics.
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Why is it important?
It expands our knowledge of how members of the public perceive body-worn camera benefits and concerns and demonstrates why we need to include more comprehensive measure into future studies on the topic.
Perspectives
Our findings indicate that public support for police body-worn cameras was influenced not only by the benefits the public perceived the use of BWC would bring, but by the concerns that they had regarding the technology. Even though demographic characteristics (race and age primarily) influence levels of public support, they do so indirectly through individuals’ attitudes and perceptions. In other words, people of different ages and races perceive different benefits and have different concerns which lead them to view the technology differently.
Professor Christie Gardiner
California State University, Fullerton
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Public support for body-worn cameras: the need for inclusion of more comprehensive measures of public concerns, Criminal Justice Studies, December 2020, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/1478601x.2020.1868455.
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