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Over the last few decades, law enforcement has come to value aspects of its role as essential to its crime-fighting capacity, including legitimacy, procedural justice, quality of life matters, and partnership with the community. While evolving law enforcement strategies have improved crime control, many departments still strive to enhance satisfaction among community members while balancing crime control and community-oriented approaches. Citizen satisfaction with police has been found to promote community buy-in and participation in identifying and addressing both criminal and non-criminal matters. Predictors of citizen satisfaction with law enforcement, however, have generally been assessed in larger, urban contexts. This study extends the literature on community-oriented policing approaches and citizen satisfaction by exploring survey results from a mid-sized U.S. city. Aside from demographic factors, levels of satisfaction with police were predicted by citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice, safety, crime, and disorder. Results suggest that police departments attend closely to fostering procedurally just interactions with citizens. Additional implications for scholarship and police practice are included.
Merenda et al. (Thu,) studied this question.