Police bias and socioeconomic status: Are the police biased towards individuals in lower SES and poverty areas?

• Main Author: Lilja Ingibjargardóttir 1986-
• Other Authors: Háskólinn í Reykjavík
• Format: Thesis
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Sálfræði; Félagsleg staða; Afbrot; Psychology; Social conditions; Crimes; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/29605

Police bias and inefficiency are greater towards individuals living in low SES neighborhoods and poverty and they tend to not report to the police because they experience abusive behavior, distrust and corruption when dealing with police. A hypothesis was proposed: People in low SES neighborhoods and poverty areas are less likely to report a crime to police as police bias and inefficiency, being one of the reasons. In USA 2012, NCVS conducted a survey for 12 years and older by BJS. A dataset of 7277 participants was available at ICPSR and used in this study, which focused on police bias and inefficiency. NCVS data files include person, household and victimization weighted average. From 3541 individuals not reporting a crime to the police, 67,8% live in poverty do not report their crime to the police and 62,1% in high SES, which are both high numbers. Two answers of three about police bias and inefficiency showed significant difference between poverty and high SES when asking about the reason for not reporting to the police. The lower the SES an individual has, the less likely he is to report to the police, because of reasons such as police inefficiency. When it came to it not being important enough to the police it was more likely to not report the higher the SES was, which did not support the hypothesis. Future studies should focus on further questions about this issue and a study conducted in low SES neighborhood in Iceland would be interesting. Keywords: socioeconomic status, SES, poverty, low income, police bias, police effectiveness, police effects on crime, victimization, crime, crime rates