Victimization, discrimination, community belonging and confidence in the police among young adults in Canada: A trauma-informed analysis

Our study examines community belonging as a mediator linking victimization and police confidence, with perceived discrimination moderating this indirect pathway among young Canadian adults. Drawing on a subset of respondents aged 15–34 from the 2019 Canadian General Social Survey (N = 3,395), we conducted analyses using logistic regression and conditional process models. Findings indicate that victimization and discrimination were significant predictors of lower confidence in the police. Community belonging also demonstrated significant associations with police confidence across the logistic interaction models. However, conditional process analyses provided limited evidence that community belonging functioned as a mediating mechanism linking victimization to police confidence. Moderated mediation analyses showed no evidence that discrimination conditioned this indirect pathway. Our study advocates for trauma-informed, procedurally fair and non-discriminatory approaches to youth-police interactions in Canada.