Ethnicity, Imprisonment, and Confidence in Police and Courts: Evidence from an International Survey

This article investigates the sources of ethnic disparities in confidence in police and courts. After reviewing studies of ethnicity and trust in legal authorities and comparative research on prisons, I argue that ethnic divides in confidence in police and courts are based on power imbalances between majority and minority groups and exacerbated by punitive legal systems. I test these claims using data from waves 6 and 7 of the World Values Survey, including 99,480 people in 59 countries. Results from mixed effects logistic regressions indicate that, overall, ethnic majority group members are more likely than minority group members to be confident in police and in courts. However, the differences are larger in countries with higher imprisonment rates. In fact, there are no ethnic differences in confidence in police or courts in countries with low imprisonment rates. The patterns remain net of individual- and country-level controls for crime and other factors. These results suggest that ethnic disparities in confidence in legal authorities are rooted in power dynamics intrinsic to the minority-majority dichotomy and that punitive legal authorities amplify the divides.