Using a brief contact to improve trust in the police by the youth

Trust in the police has many positive effects, so it is important to explore solutions to improve police-community relations, especially in areas where such relations are deteriorated. In this paper, I use a lab-in-the-field experiment in two high schools in France to investigate the effect of a brief and controlled discussion - contact - between police officers and students on trust. The results indicate a positive effect of contact on trust at the individual level, i.e. toward the specific police officer met. However, the effect does not translate into an increase in trust in the police in general. A Bayesian model of belief formation can shed light on why a single contact may not be sufficient in the case of prior — negative — interactions. This paper can have implications for the most widely used policy to improve perceptions of the police, namely community policing. • Large portions of the French population do not exhibit high trust in the police. • I run an experiment to test the effects of a brief contact between high schoolers and police officers. • Contacts improved trust at the individual but not at the collective level. • Results are consistent with a Bayesian belief updating framework.