Trust in Criminal Justice System

What do the data show?

Trust in the criminal justice system follows a similar inverted-U pattern as trust in the police, which is one part of the criminal justice system. However, while trust in the criminal justice system is much lower overall, levels now are similar to those in the 1990s, whereas trust in police has declined. Less than 20% of people reported trust in the criminal justice system—the lowest among all the institutions we examined. We rank just below Canada, Andorra, and Australia. We are also tied with Russia, and China is the highest ranked country.

What might explain these patterns?

One potential explanation for the low standing of the criminal justice system as a whole, relative to police alone, is that the police are a more visible part of the criminal justice system to the average person, compared with courts and prisons. Most of us see police officers on a daily basis, and familiarity tends to promote trust, similar to what we observed with people trusting local government more than federal government. However, this seems insufficient to explain the overall discrepancy between trust in police and the criminal justice system. People also see the police in person in other countries, yet our trust in criminal justice is lower than trust in police (we outperform only 39% of countries with the criminal justice system but 66% with the police).

Another possible explanation is that people blame the criminal justice system for the nation’s high murder rate (see the Violence section). But, again, if the explanation were the rate of violence, then we might expect people to blame both the police and criminal justice in similar ways, and this does not seem to be the case. Also, the murder rate has generally been improving even as trust in both criminal justice and the police is worsening.

The especially low standing of the criminal justice system may be more about the courts, prisons, and sentencing rules. Much attention has been paid recently to prisoners who turned out to be innocent after years behind bars. Also, the United States has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world.