Research regularly finds significant variation in the perceived trustworthiness of police across different social groups. For example, studies from a number of different countries have shown that people from particular ethnic and racial minority groups tend to have less positive evaluations and lower expectations of police effectiveness, benevolence and integrity, compared to their majority group counterparts. However, much less is known about how trust – as a willingness to be vulnerable under conditions of risk – varies across groups. Moreover, the criminological literature regularly conflates trustworthiness and trust, and/or assumes the former translates unproblematically into the latter. In this paper, we use data from a survey of three immigrant groups living in Sydney, Australia, to explore the relationship between trustworthiness and trust. We focus on how aspects of the ‘immigrant experience’ may affect the translation of trustworthiness into trust, and whether there are factors that predict trust independent of evaluations of the trust object. Our results show that social norms, which vary across immigrant groups, predict levels of trust independent of trustworthiness, as do other individual and group-level characteristics. This has important implications, both for the conceptualisation and empirical study of trust in the police, and for policy efforts that seek to enhance public trust in this important state institution.

研究经常发现不同社会群体对警察可信度的看法存在显着差异。例如，来自许多不同国家的研究表明，与多数群体的同行相比，来自特定族裔和种族少数群体的人往往对警察的效力、仁慈和廉正的积极评价和期望较低。然而，人们对信任——作为在风险条件下变得脆弱的意愿——如何因群体而异而知之甚少。此外，犯罪学文献经常将可信赖性和信任混为一谈，和/或假设前者可以毫无问题地转化为后者。在本文中，我们使用对居住在澳大利亚悉尼的三个移民群体的调查数据来探讨可信度与信任之间的关系。我们关注“移民经历”的各个方面如何影响可信度到信任的转化，以及是否存在独立于信任对象评估的预测信任的因素。我们的结果表明，社会规范在不同移民群体中有所不同，可以预测独立于可信度的信任水平，其他个人和群体层面的特征也是如此。这对于警察信任的概念化和实证研究，以及旨在增强公众对这一重要国家机构的信任的政策努力都有重要意义。这在移民群体中有所不同，预测独立于可信度的信任水平，其他个人和群体水平的特征也是如此。这对于警察信任的概念化和实证研究，以及旨在增强公众对这一重要国家机构的信任的政策努力都有重要意义。这在移民群体中有所不同，预测独立于可信度的信任水平，其他个人和群体水平的特征也是如此。这对于警察信任的概念化和实证研究，以及旨在增强公众对这一重要国家机构的信任的政策努力都有重要意义。