Understanding Crime Surveillance Attitudes

Surveillance plays an increasingly important role in policing and the criminal justice system. Developments in surveillance technology, data storage capacities, and data analytics have made it easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before to gather large amounts of data and track large numbers of people. However, the social psychology of surveillance attitudes remains understudied, especially in the criminal justice context. In addition to recent federal and state legislation limiting the use of law enforcement surveillance technology, efforts by some communities have involved increasing transparency and giving private citizens more opportunity to weigh in on decisions to adopt or continue using specific types of surveillance, making public surveillance attitudes a topic of increased importance. Given the political, social, and individual consequences that crime surveillance can have, it is important to develop a greater theoretical understanding of what factors drive support and acceptance of such practices.This dissertation examined potential factors underlying attitudes toward crime surveillance. Two separate studies were conducted. A survey (n = 299) measured crime surveillance attitudes, legal authoritarianism, right-wing authoritarianism, fear of crime, level of interaction with surveillance-implicating technology, and attitudes toward surveillance by private companies, citizens, and employers. A multiple linear regression and mediation analysis indicated that legal authoritarianism, private surveillance attitudes, and level of interaction with consumer technology that implicates surveillance were all significant predictors of crime surveillance attitudes, and that non-crime surveillance attitudes partially mediated the relationship between consumer technology use and crime surveillance attitudes. A separate 2x2 experiment (n = 257) manipulated the racial demographics and crime levels in a hypothetical city presented to participants and asked them to rate their support for a series of proposed crime surveillance measures. Unexpectedly, there were no statistically significant main or interaction effects. Potential reasons for this and future directions are discussed. Overall, these findings highlight the relationship between everyday interactions with and attitudes toward surveillance by private citizens and companies and how people feel about law enforcement surveillance, despite there being significant differences in terms of the potential implication. The role of legal authoritarianism in predicting crime surveillance attitudes also indicates that support for crime surveillance might also be associated with other punitive crime control attitudes. More generally, these studies represent a step toward bridging the existing gap in the literature on crime surveillance attitudes and offer several future directions for further investigation