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Given the consistent finding in the literature that members of minority groups hold less favorable views of the police than white citizens, social distance may be an important, yet untested, mediator. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of social distance net of other established correlates.

A sample of students attending a university in the northeastern USA completed an online survey in 2013. The survey was about their contact with the police, attitudes toward the police, and lifestyles, among others.

Race, along with other predictors, significantly influenced confidence in police. However, race is the only factor that turns nonsignificant when social distance is included in the model. Mediation tests confirmed that social distance mediates the relationship between race and confidence in the police.

To maximize confidence in the police, administrators should focus on closing the social distance between the public and the police through initiatives like community policing.

While there is extensive research on public attitudes toward the police, social distance has been neglected as a determinant, despite movements like community policing that promote citizens’ relational closeness to the police – that is, to decrease the social distance between police and the public. The current study would be an exploratory study and reference for future studies.

Police factor in extra‐legal as well as legal context in their decision to arrest a suspect. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of extra‐legal factors at both situational and neighborhood levels.

Using hierarchical generalized linear modeling, over 9,000 domestic violence cases across 421 census tracts in Houston, Texas were examined. Situational information was derived from police reports, and neighborhood factors were measured by population characteristics drawn from the US Census Bureau. The model also controls for spatial autocorrelation of arrest rates between census tracts in the estimation of officer's arrest decision.

At the neighborhood level, concentrated disadvantage and immigration concentration had positive effect on the odds of arrest. At the situational level, the time of day, day of the week, premise type, and gender and racial relations between suspect and complainant, along with offense type and weapons use, had significant impact.

The scant literature has not yet provided an affirmative set of extra‐legal factors affecting police arrest decision. The paper's findings may contribute to the literature and suggest the need for guidelines concerning officer discretion exercised in the line of duty.