Public Safety Confidence Dashboard
Welcome to the Public Safety Confidence Index Dashboard
A collaboration between the National Policing Institute and Zencity to understand the nation's views on law enforcement. By clicking through the tabs shown above, you can explore sentiment and safety through geography, demographics, and more.
What is an index?
Understanding Indices
The sentiment and safety indices are single scores created by combining several related survey items to represent an overall concept. In this case, the sentiment index represents respondents' overall perceptions of law enforcement, and the safety index represents respondents' perception of safety. Scores range from 0-100 with higher scores indicating more positive perceptions and greater feelings of safety.How is the data gathered?
Data Collection Methods
Zencity recruits survey community members where they can be readily reached: on any digital device. With the help of targeted ads on social media, mobile apps, and survey panels, Zencity assembles a representative sample of the local community and ensures that all voices, especially those who might not be included in traditional survey formats, are heard. For more information, visit Zencity’s methodology help articles .Why is this important?
The Importance of Understanding
Understanding the views of the community is critical for ongoing collaborative policing efforts. The Dashboard provides an overview of public sentiment towards law enforcement agencies, allowing for data-driven decision-making and fostering transparency. By understanding perceptions, law enforcement can better address concerns and improve service in communities.What is a sentiment index?
Understanding Sentiment
The sentiment index measures how positively people view their local police department based on trust, respect, and service quality. It combines responses about whether police are approachable, provide quality service, treat residents fairly, and are transparent in their work. Higher scores indicate more positive feelings toward police.What is a safety index?
Understanding Safety
The safety index measures how safe people feel in their community and how effective they believe police are at maintaining public safety. It combines responses about safety in public areas, roadways, police effectiveness at solving crimes, and personal feelings of neighborhood safety. Higher scores indicate greater feelings of safety.Why did we do this?
Our Purpose
This dashboard was created to provide law enforcement agencies, policymakers, and communities with data-driven insights into public perceptions of policing. By understanding sentiment and safety concerns across different demographics and regions, we can work together to build stronger, more trusting relationships between police and the communities they serve.This chart tracks sentiment and safety scores over time across survey cycles. These trends can help identify whether public perceptions are improving, declining, or remaining stable. Sample sizes (n) are shown above each data point for the scores.
Index Definitions
Sentiment Index
A measure of how positively people view their local police department based on trust, respect, fairness, and approachability. Combines six survey items measuring whether police listen to residents, are transparent, treat people fairly and respectfully, are approachable, and would treat individuals with respect during contact.
Safety Index
A measure of how safe people feel in their community and how effective they believe police are at maintaining public safety. Combines five survey items measuring personal feelings of neighborhood safety, police effectiveness at keeping public areas and roadways safe, providing quality service, and solving crimes.
Scale
Both indices range from 0-100, where higher scores indicate more positive responses. A score of 50 typically corresponds to a 'neutral' or 'somewhat agree' response on the original survey scales. Scores closer to 100 represent strongly positive views, while scores closer to 0 represent more negative views.
The map shows sentiment and safety scores across the United States. Darker colors indicate higher scores, meaning more positive perceptions of law enforcement (sentiment) or greater feelings of safety (safety). States with insufficient data (fewer than 50 effective respondents) are shown in gray. Use the selector to the left to switch between sentiment and safety views.
This chart displays sentiment and safety scores for the top 20 states by sample size within the selected region, ordered from highest to lowest overall scores. Use the dropdown menu to explore different regions. States with higher sentiment scores show more positive perceptions of law enforcement, while higher safety scores indicate greater feelings of personal safety.
This chart shows how sentiment and safety scores vary across major U.S. regions. Regional differences can reflect varying cultural attitudes, policing approaches, and community experiences. Both sentiment and safety scores show small variations between regions, with some regions showing consistently higher or lower scores across both measures.
Regional Definitions (U.S. Census Bureau Divisions):- New England: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont
- Middle Atlantic: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania
- East North Central: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin
- West North Central: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota
- South Atlantic: Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington D.C.
- East South Central: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee
- West South Central: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas
- Mountain: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
- Pacific: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington
People who experienced a crime reported lower levels of both sentiment and safety than those who did not. Among those who did experience a crime, those who reported the crime reported similar levels of safety but higher sentiment toward police than those who did not report it.
This section explores how sentiment and safety scores vary across different demographic groups. Use the dropdown menu to examine differences by race, gender, education level, age, or Hispanic origin. These breakdowns can reveal important disparities in how different communities experience and perceive law enforcement and safety.
Index Construction
The Sentiment and Safety indices are constructed by combining multiple related survey items. Each person's responses to the individual questions in each category (sentiment and safety) are first converted to a consistent 0-100 scale, then averaged to create their personal index scores. For 5-point agreement scales (strongly disagree to strongly agree), responses are mapped to 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100. For the 4-point safety scale (not at all safe to completely safe), responses are mapped to 0, 33, 67, and 100. This direct transformation creates intuitive percentage-like scores where 0 represents the most negative response and 100 represents the most positive response, making the results easy to understand and interpret. The diagram below shows how individual items combine to form each index.
Sentiment Index Components
- Listen
- Transparent
- Treat Fairly
- Treat Respect
- Treat Respect Any Reason
- Officers Approachable
Safety Index Components
- Safety
- Public Areas Safe
- Roadways Safe
- Quality of Service
- Solve Crime
Sentiment Index
Safety Index
Survey Questions
Sentiment Index Questions:
Each question uses a 5-point agreement scale (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree) that is converted to a 0-100 scale (0, 25, 50, 75, 100) before averaging:
- Listen: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police listen to and take into account the concerns of local residents.
- Transparent: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police are an open and transparent organization.
- Treat Fairly: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police treat everyone fairly regardless of who they are.
- Treat Respect: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police treat local residents with respect.
- Treat Respect Any Reason: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police would treat you with respect if you had contact with them for any reason.
- Officers Approachable: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police officers are approachable.
Safety Index Questions:
The Safety question uses a 4-point scale converted to 0-100 (0, 33, 67, 100). The other four questions use 5-point agreement scales converted to 0-100 (0, 25, 50, 75, 100). All converted scores are then averaged:
- Safety: When it comes to the threat of crime, how safe do you feel in your neighborhood? (Completely safe / Mostly safe / Somewhat safe / Not safe)
- Public Areas Safe: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police keep parks and other public areas safe and orderly.
- Roadways Safe: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police keep the roadways in the community safe.
- Quality of Service: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police provide the same quality of service to all individuals.
- Solve Crime: To what extent do you agree or disagree: Police solve crimes and hold offenders accountable.
Methodology Notes
- The data presented in this dashboard are drawn from Zencity's national survey of U.S. adults, conducted every quarter continuously since January 2024.
- The results are based on a non-probability survey of respondents recruited through a mix of social media, web ads, online panels, and mobile integrations.
- The results were rake weighted to align with population demographics from the U.S. Census American Community Survey.
- Surveys had item nonresponse rates between 0.3% and 9.5% on items used to construct the indices. We impute missing values using the miceforest package. Using imputed data produces very similar results as only using non-missing responses and ensures equal weighting of items within indices.
- All respondents with complete survey responses are included in national, regional, and demographic analyses. States with a net effective sample size (N eff ) of less than 50 are excluded from state-level analyses to ensure reliability. The effective sample size is calculated as: N eff = (Σw) 2 / Σ(w 2 ), where w represents the survey weight for each respondent. This measure accounts for the loss of precision due to weighting and provides a conservative estimate of the effective number of independent observations.
