Determinants of Constables’ Perceptions of Community Support in Three Developing Nations

Abstract

This research seeks to explore the factors that affect community support of the police as perceived by constables in three developing Caribbean nations: Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. Constables in these nations were surveyed on a variety of law enforcement issues including their judgments about citizen support and cooperation for the activities necessary to produce effective community policing. It is hypothesized that constables’ perceptions of public support are determined by individual, situational, organizational, and national factors. A multivariate conceptual model is constructed based on U.S. research and analyzed using regression analysis. Overall, the findings indicate that organizational and especially national factors influence such perceptions. Within-nation analyses reveal interesting differences in the factors that influence whether a community is seen by officers as supportive of their work.