Policing Services and the Quality of Life

Abstract

In this paper results are reported of a random sample survey of 698 residents of Prince George, British Columbia taken in May 2001. The main aim of the survey was to measure respondents’ assessments of local police services in Prince George, and their relative impact on the quality of respondents’ lives. Generally speaking, the evaluations were quite favourable. For example, in response to the question ‘what kind of a job do you think the RCMP are doing’, 30% said a ‘very good job’ and 38% said a ‘fairly good job’, compared to 2% who said they were doing a ‘very poor job’ and 4% more a ‘fairly poor job’. Compared to a 1997 survey, fewer people thought that crime had increased in the past few years, which is actually consistent with official crime statistics. The biggest perceived problem was with speeding and careless driving, although respondents rated traffic and highway enforcement as the least important of a dozen kinds of police activities. People most appreciated police work aimed at preventing crimes. Of the things people did to protect themselves from becoming a victim, keeping items in their cars out of sight headed the list. As in previous surveys in this community, highest levels of satisfaction were expressed for living partners and family relations generally. Estimating the relative impact of three police/crime related variables (satisfaction with feelings of personal safety around one’s home and in one’s community, and with local policing services) on the quality of life measured in five different ways in the context of 12 other variables, it was found that only the last variable (satisfaction with policing services) had a statistically significant association to the quality of life measured in three of the five ways. Forty percent of the variation in happiness scores and 63% of the variation in life satisfaction scores could be explained by five and six predictors, respectively, without any significant association with satisfaction with policing services. Sixty-two percent of the variation in satisfaction with respondents’ overall quality of life scores could be explained by eight predictors, with satisfaction with policing services as the third most influential predictor behind satisfaction with respondents’ self-esteem and friendships. Sixty-one percent of the variation in satisfaction with respondents’ standard of living scores was explained by seven predictors, with satisfaction with policing services being least influential. Finally, 76% of the variation in an index of subjective well-being (summing the scores of the other four global indicators) was explained by nine predictors, with satisfaction with policing services being second least influential.

I would like to thank the following people for their help in designing, administrating and interpreting the survey: RCMP Superintendent Steven F. Leach, Inspector Dahl Chambers, Staff /Sgt. Reg Kilden and Julie Orlando.