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Department

Criminal Justice

Disciplines

Criminal Procedure

Abstract

Research shows that healthy police-community relationships are important for an effective police department. However, although many studies have investigated the relationship between racial minorities and police, only a small portion focus on the Islamic community. This is problematic because hostility towards the Islamic community has been on the rise in the United States (US) since the attacks of 9/11 (Jackson, 2010), and current Middle Eastern conflicts have led to an influx of Muslim refugees into the US. This has further diversified neighborhoods and is the reason that it is just as imperative to explore police-Muslim interactions as it is to explore police interactions with other minority groups. This study asks—how do Muslim community members perceive the police, and how do their interactions with police affect their perceptions of law enforcement? This study hypothesizes that, like racial minorities, Muslim community members perceive the police more negatively than average, and that their interactions with police negatively affect their perceptions. A survey was be distributed to a sample of Muslim community members to measure their perceptions of police. A snowball sampling method was used, facilitated by a prominent member of the Muslim community. The sample was drawn from a mid-size city in the Northwest.

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Faculty Mentor

Dr. Cody Jorgensen