Untangling citizens' perceptions of the police: the relationship between confidence and satisfaction

This article proposes a conceptual clarification of the notions of confidence and satisfaction with the police based on empirical data. It comes out of a context in which these two types of perceptions are commonly used interchangeably, despite having significantly different implications for police-community relations. Scientific literature suggests that satisfaction refers to a posterior evaluation of expectations, while confidence refers to an assessment of risk with regard to future action, behavior, and states of being. While our results support this distinction, they also highlight an association between these two types of perceptions: satisfaction with police work can lead to citizen confidence in the police. Untangling the relationship between these two perceptions is thus necessary if studies in this field of research are to have adequate tools to present a fair portrait of police-community relations.