Police station design and intrusive police encounters: untangling variations in emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions across racial groups

ABSTRACT Cultivating positive human interactions is at the core of many strategies used to strengthen the relationship between police and community members, with the use of criminal justice architecture being an emergent strategy. This study employs a survey experiment to examine police station design as a strategy to improve police-community relationships and the interactive effect of an individual’s previous encounters with police officers. Study results show that the impact of welcoming police station designs on emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions are moderated by intrusive encounters with police officers. Specifically, analyses reveal that people with previous arrest experiences respond more positively when confronted with a welcoming police station design compared to persons without an arrest history. Subgroup analyses further yield variation across Black and White racial groups based on previous encounters with police. Together, the symbol of a welcoming police station may foster more pleasant emotional reactions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions for persons with criminal records, however, it elicits less pleasant emotional reactions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions for persons without a criminal history. Theoretical and practical implications in the pursuit of police architecture that foster positive police-community relationships are discussed.

law enforcement and neighbourhoods composed mostly of racial minorities through more humane interactionsopportunities for officers to show their value of, and respect for, residents' dignity.For instance, racial diversification within police departments is thought to facilitate more respectful civilian-police contact via an affective and emotional connection between residents of colour and local police officers (see representative bureaucracy theory; Kingsley 1944, Headley and Wright 2020, Wright and Headley 2020).Neighbourhood meetings (Skogan 2000, Roussell and Gascón 2014, Lombardo and Donner 2018) or increased foot patrols (Rosenbaum and Lurigio 1994) are ways departments have sought to increase resident involvement in day-to-day police agency decision-making, often nested within broader community-policing strategies (Gill 2014, Braga et al. 2019).Likewise, initiatives to mend police-community relationships often bring officers into contact with people of colour outside the tense situation of a crime investigation or victimisation, like Police Athletic Leagues or other police-sponsored sporting activities (Bennett 1995), youth programmes (Fine et al. 2021), community events, and ride-alongs (see President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing).
In addition, police symbols contextualise police-community interactions, dating back to the adoption of the police uniform (Joseph and Alex 1972).Some studies show that police are perceived favourably (e.g.approachable or respectful) when they wear the uniform as opposed to civilian clothing (Simpson 2017) or drive marked vehicles as opposed to unmarked police vehicles (Simpson 2019).Blaskovits and colleagues (2022) find variation in how police officers are viewed by the public when the police appear militarised (e.g.donning camouflage pants or holding rifles) across dimensions of trustworthiness, approachableness, aggressiveness, helpfulness, bias behaviour, and procedural fairness, for example.Still, amidst a panoply of methods for easing relations between police and the communities they serve, fewer strategies focus on changing a visible and prominent police symbolic structurethe buildings that bear their name (Headley et al. 2021), an emergent thought that requires more scrutiny.Headley et al. (2021) find that welcoming police station designs foster positive emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions among the public 2such as feelings of safety, confidence that the police will handle a criminal complaint seriously and professionally, or the likelihood that a person will enter a given police building, which also vary for racial and ethnic groups.The study's authors suggest that police station designs may signal different messages to different racial groups based on prior historical experiences with police officers.
Policing strategies and use of policing symbols are premised on the notion that there is a relationship between police contact (both its mere occurrence and its manner) and policing symbols on subsequent public perceptions.Though experiences with police officers encompass a variety of social interactions and associated outcomes (e.g.asking for directions or reporting a crime), research on intrusive police actions, such as stops and arrests in particular, show that these interactions can lead to unfavourable attitudes toward the police as these experiences accumulate (Jesilow and Namazzi 1995).Developing a comprehensive body of research into policing symbols, such as police buildings, requires empiricial investigation of the influence of intrusive experiences with the police (e.g.police stops or arrests).The current study is organised to: (1) provide an overview of criminal justice humanism and welcoming police buildings; (2) highlight prior encounters with police officers as a key concern for research on police station design; (3) introduce the study's research questions, design, and methods; (4) describe the analytical approach and results; and (5) outline the study's implications, limitations, and the direction of future research.

Criminal justice humanism and open-transparent-inclusive police buildings
To be 'humane' is to evince a devotion to human welfare or wellbeing (Merriam-Webster 2022).Humane approaches within the field of criminal justice seek solutions that prevent or respond to crime while centreing human dignity, human rights, and the impact of policies on the lives of all people, guaranteeing the justice system will work for everyone (Klein and Van Ness 2002).From this perspective, criminal justice organisations (e.g.police, court and correctional agencies) are recognised as responsible for addressing issues of crime and maintaining the wellbeing of all persons either under their charge or who encounter these institutions.This includes ensuring that persons are physically and psychologically safe and protected while under the authority of U.S. justice systemsfundamental rights protected by the Eighth Amendment (see Gorlin 2009 or Struve 2012 on corrections); the Fourth Amendment (see Stewart 1983, Sklansky 2000, Rosenthal 2010, or Winn 2008 on policing); and the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments (see Israel 1963, Gross 1974, Tibe 1975, Mayeux 2013 on the courts) to the U.S. Constitution. 3 In turn, humane design or human-centered design foregrounds human rights in service and product design, including the design of criminal justice edifices.Often interpreted as a focus on issues of user interface, at core, human-centered design emphasises moral and ethical considerations of what end product is created as well as how it will impact persons (Buchanan 2001).While 'human-centered' highlights the capacity to promote human aims via design, 'inhumane' is meant to indicate how lack of human-centeredness can engender impingements on human rights and threats to human dignity.For example, the extent to which the design of jail and prison edifices facilitate positive outcomes or perpetuate further harm is a concern in carceral humanist discourse (Kurti and Shanahan 2018), and is highlighted in carceral design frameworks (St. John 2019, 2020, 2022, Blount-Hill 2023).Germane to this study are perspectives on police edifice design, particularly the Open, Transparent, and Inclusive (OTI) design framework (Blount-Hill et al. 2017), which emphasises humanist ideals such as signalling that law enforcement is present to support the wellbeing of community members and will treat all members fairly.Interpreting OTI as a humanist design framework also highlights perceptual impact as an important humanist concern alongside more concrete impacts like, say, health outcomes (St. John and Blount-Hill 2019).Moreover, perceptions influence behavioural outcomes in several ways.Perceptions of hostility, for instance, might cause persons to avoid seeking the support of policing institutions (Rich and Grey 2005, Bowleg 2020, van der Meulen et al. 2021), despite often wanting their assistance (Lum et al. 2022).Symbols shape public perceptions about the associated institutions and actors by signalling or communicating what and who is valued or not (Posner 1998).Welcoming police architecture should symbolise an invitation for community members to enter and access their public safety professionals (IACP 2019, Headley et al. 2021).Thus, buildings are matters of humanist concern because, among other things, their symbolic influence can have important effects on human welfare.
While the body of research connecting correctional architecture to behaviours and perceptions is well established (see Engstrom and Van Ginneken 2022 or St. John and Blount-Hill 2019 for recent overviews), research on the general role of police station architecture on public perceptions and behaviours consists of only four peer-reviewed studies (Clinton and Devlin 2011, Millie 2012, Toews 2018, Headley et al. 2021), at least at the time of this writing.To date, OTI is the only offered framework for designing and evaluating police buildings (Blount-Hill et al. 2017).At its core sits an ideal of welcomingness (or welcomeness), 'the quality of a building's architectural and aesthetic design, maintenance, and locational settings that invite users to enter and remain there comfortably' (Headley et al. 2021, p. 2).Blount-Hill et al. (2017) describe various elements that make a building welcoming, which Headley et al. (2021) operationalise along a welcoming-hostile spectrum for an initial empirical test.Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) illustrated that when 'welcoming' attributes (i.e.liberating, open to the public, easily accessible, harmless, hospitable, friendly, social, and safe) reside in the same building, it is ostensibly seen as generally welcoming. 4The original aim of OTI was to foster positive police-community relationships through enhancing positive assessments of police legitimacy, that is, greater acceptance of police authority (Blount-Hill et al. 2017). 5OTI is an example of human-centered design in that the framework promotes positive feelings and interactions with officers associated with the edifice.A police building that fosters positive emotions (e.g.feelings of safety) that lead to behavioural intentions (e.g.crime reporting) to enhance human welfare through objective safety and subjective good feeling simply through its design is a powerful mechanism to build better police-community relationships.Although the redesign of police buildings cannot override the impact of poor interactions with police (including unjust or prejudicial treatment by the police), a building is one tool to impact public perceptions of the police.
In an experimental study on perceptions of police buildings, Headley and colleagues (2021) find that a welcoming police station design positively impacts the emotional reactions of the public, suggesting that designs can promote psychological wellbeing.However, the results of the study also show that people do not perceive welcomeness identically, a challenge to any simplistic notion of using design as a tool for improving police-community relations.In the study, when faced with a 'welcoming' versus 'hostile' design, White onlookers were more likely to report positive emotions (i.e.feeling safe, confident, optimistic, calm, content, and relaxed) when presented a welcoming design, whereas a positive emotional reaction was more likely to be reported by Black and Latino respondents viewing police buildings categorised as hostile.One hypothesis proffered to explain this oddity is that buildings characterised as 'hostile' might just as well be seen as decrepit rather than imposing.Assuming this interpretation, perhaps Black and Latino people react more positively to a physical representation of a historically oppressive institution that is under-resourced and thereby weakened (particularly because hostile building also appeared to be dated and welcoming buildings looked modern).
The survey experiment design used in Headley et al. (2021) ensures randomisation across individuals which naturally controls for variations across exogenous factors like prior experiences with the police (Stanley 2007).In their design, Headley et al. (2021) focus attention solely on civilians' 'contact' with police buildings: ' … [M]any members of the public interact with police buildings more than with police officers; one may walk, jog or drive past a station repeatedly without ever meeting an officer' (p. 1).This is true for most of the public whose impressions police hope to manage, whose overwhelming compliance is necessary for social order, and whose support will ensure police budgets and attention to a policing agenda.However, manner of police contact is not equally distributed across the public, nor is the frequency of police contact of any type or quality.As scholars and others recognise a 'crisis' in the public's declining assessments of police legitimacy (Ortiz 2020, Jones 2021, Ferdik et al. 2022), this study takes the position that poor perceptions of legitimacy are concentrated amongst sub-groups in the population and, thus, research should also focus attention on these populations (Blount-Hill 2021).Accordingly, this investigation adds, to Headley et al.'s findings, a set of analyses that determine to what extent prior intrusive encounters with police moderate the relationship between police station design and respondents' emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions.

A key determinant: prior intrusive police encounters
This study takes as its fundamental premise that humane environments are inherently more welcoming and less hostile for occupants and the public who frequent them.As noted, Headley et al. (2021) finds that welcoming police buildings elicit different responses along racial and ethnic lines.Instead of interpreting this result as affirmation that more humane buildings benefit White individuals and less welcoming settings benefit Black and Latino people, some discrepancy may be accounted for by differences in the extent, type, and place of individuals' encounters with police.A person's experiences and interactions with law enforcementa well-known predictor of perceptions about police (Simpson 2017, 2019, 2021, Bowleg 2020, Bolger et al. 2021)may, cumulatively generate difference in significance and magnitude of emotional reactions and perceptions within and between racial and ethnic groups faced with more welcoming police buildings.
Research investigating individuals' prior experiences with law enforcement demonstrates that these interactions impact emotional responses toward, and perceptions of, police.Treatment during police contact is one of the most important predictors of how an individual will evaluate the police (Scaglion and Condon 1980, Brown and Reed Benedict 2002, Wells 2007, Alberton and Gorey 2018).Positive contact with police promotes positive attitudes toward law enforcement and negative police contact engenders negative assessments of police (Rusinko et al. 1978, Dean 1980, Bartsch and Cheurprakobkit 2004, Weitzer and Tuch 2005, Bradford et al. 2009, Hinds 2009).Contact with police may influence a range of attitudinal outcomes, including perceptions of police performance (Cheurprakobkit 2000), misconduct (Miller and Davis 2008), or belief that police are legitimate and rightful authorities (Reisig et al. 2018).Skogan's (2006) work suggests this effect may be asymmetrical, with 'bad' experiences having a stronger impact on overall generalised perceptions of police than 'good' ones.Also notable is that research finds prior police contact is influential despite the race of respondents (Schuck andRosenbaum 2005, Schuck et al. 2008).Importantly, results regarding the overall effect of prior police contact have not been unanimous.Hinds and Murphy (2007) find that prior contact with police is not an important predictor of one's satisfaction with law enforcement and Rosenbaum (2005) find that vicarious experience may be a more important predictor of such attitudes.
Notwithstanding conflicting results, a large body of literature finds that prior police contact has a direct relationship with various attitudes toward police, including positive emotion.This study examines whether intrusive police contact might impact the relationship between the perception of police buildings and the emotion or perceptions they elicit.One might expect earlier contact with police to modify the relationship between building welcomeness and respondent emotion and perceptions.Understanding this relationship might lend insight into previously unexpected differences across race and ethnicity by building architecture (Headley et al. 2021) and reinforce the fact that officer treatment of the public, no matter what symbolic changes a police agency undertakes, remains an important influence on how police are perceived, adding complexity to how police station designs might be used to cultivate positive relationships.

Research questions
The present study further explicates whether the architecture of police buildings are essential to encouraging positive perceptions of, and behaviours toward, the police, as previously hypothesised (Blount-Hill et al. 2017) and tested (Headley et al. 2021), though now considering the moderating influence of respondents' prior interaction with police (focusing on intrusive police contacts, i.e. arrest and stops).The study also accounts for race, as Headley et al.'s findings demonstrated the effect of police architecture on respondents' emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions varies across racial and ethnic groups.This investigation aims to fill in a knowledge gap where research on the juxtaposition of prior intrusive police encounters and police station architecture does not exist.This study is guided by the following research questions: How do prior intrusive encounters with police moderate the direct effect that design of a police building has on participants' (i) emotions toward police and (ii) behavioural perceptions to report a crime?Is this effect invariant between racial and ethnic groups?The hypotheses (H) are as follows: (H1) -Respondents' prior encounters with police officers will moderate the relationship between police station design and respondents' emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions; and (H2) -Relationships will vary by the race and ethnic group in question.

TESS sampling frame and sample
Data for this analysis is based on an experimental study that uses a sample from the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) panel, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, which used the University of Chicago's NORC's AmeriSpeak® probability-based nationally representative survey platform.In the AmeriSpeak® panel, randomly selected households were sampled from the NORC National Sample Frame, which covers approximately 97 percent of U.S. households. 6In order to have a representative sample of households, the 2010 National Frame relied on a two-stage probability sample design: (1) leveraging either metropolitan areas or counties and (2) subsequently, selecting census tracts or blocks (i.e.segment).In total, the National Frame encompassed approximately 3 million households that were stratified based on segment sociodemographic characteristics (such as age and race/ethnicity) and a random sample of housing units (AmeriSpeak 2022).For the purposes of this survey experiment, a general population sample of U.S. adults aged 18 years and older with an oversample of Black/African American and Hispanic/ Latino individuals was selected from the AmeriSpeak® panel using sampling strata based on key demographics (age, race/ethnicity, education, and gender) and expected differential survey completion rates.The survey was fielded in November 2019 in English via email and self-administered online to individuals.Survey respondents received $3 for their completion.A total of 732 individuals participated.

The TESS experiment
During the experiment, respondents were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they were told that a neighbour's house was burglarised.Respondents were then told to imagine they were going to a nearby police station to report the crime.Respondents were presented with an image of either a hostile or welcoming police building, altered at random, and told it was the local station where they would report the property crime. 7After exposure to the scenario, participants responded to questions measuring their emotional response and behaviourally-relevant perceptions, as well as demographic, attitudinal, and experiential factors that might explain variation in those responses, including information on prior experiences with police.A description of the experiment is in Appendix A. Table 1 provides balance statistics across the experimental conditions and Table 2 provides descriptive statistics for the outcome measures. 8

Key variables
The TESS study consisted of a vignette survey experiment exploring the impact of police building design on emotional responses and behaviourally-relevant perceptions.The original TESS study was preceded by a pilot study in which survey respondents were asked to rate to what degree six police buildings were open, welcoming, liberating, easily accessible, harmless, hospitable, friendly, social, safe, hostile, isolated, cold, secretive, threatening, unsafe or oppressive using photographs of the buildings.Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) demonstrated that ratings on these 16 measures could be reliably combined into a composite measure of 'welcoming' or 'hostile' (see Headley et al. 2021).In the examination herein, police building design remains a dichotomous dummy variable coded 0 when the police building is 'welcoming' and 1 when the police building is 'hostile.' One of the main outcomes of interest is positive emotions.A respondent's positive emotion was a self-reported rating on whether they felt safe, confident, optimistic, calm, content or relaxed when approaching the displayed police building to report the crime (measures adapted from positive affect and anxiety scales -Bennefield 2018, Marteau and Bekker 1992).Each of these were measured using a 5-point Likert scale that was reverse coded and ranged from 'does not describe my feelings' (1) to 'clearly describes my feelings' (5).Using these items, an EFA (ɑ = 0.90) yielded one latent factor underlying positive emotional responses (λ = 4.02).Using Stata's 'predict' command, factor scores for this latent factor were generated for each respondent in the experimental sample.Table 3 includes varimax rotated factor loadings, uniqueness, eigenvalues, and the percent of item variance explained by each factor.
The second outcome of interest is behaviourally-relevant perceptions.Participants were asked how confident they were that their criminal complaint would be taken seriously, whether they believed the individuals in the police building would be professional, and their overall likelihood for entering the police building to report the crime.All were measured on a 5-point Likert scale, reverse coded and ranged from 'strongly disagree' (1) to 'strongly agree' (5) or 'very unlikely' (1) to 'very likely' (5).A single composite measure of these individual indicators using EFA (ɑ = 0.82) was created and revealed one factor (λ = 2.03).Table 4 includes rotated factor loadings, uniqueness, eigenvalues, and percentage of variance for intent to report.The study's moderating variables of prior intrusive experience with police relies on survey responses to two questions.Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with their last police stop measured across six categories, which ranged from 'very satisfied' (1) to 'very dissatisfied' (5), with 'not applicable' included as a value representing persons never stopped by the police.This measure was collapsed into a dummy variable with 2 options of either 'yes dissatisfied' (1) or 'no not dissatisfied' (0)the latter category includes those who responded with 'very' or 'somewhat' satisfied, 'neither satisfied nor dissatisfied', and those who responded 'not applicable' because they were not stopped. 9In this re-coding of satisfaction, the study maintains a focus on the impact of dissatisfaction with police stops (1) versus all other possible positions regarding police contact (0).Participants also responded whether they were arrested in the past (coded 0 as 'never arrested' and 1 as 'arrested') as a measure for prior intrusive experience with police.

Analyses and results
The analytical models for this study consist of eight ordinary least squares regression analyses with state clusters and robust standard errors.This section displays regression results in tables, and for statistically significant interactions, the section displays plots with the average adjusted predictions measuring the average value of the outcome for specific interactions.Hypotheses 1 (H1) outlined that prior intrusive police experience impacts the relationships that exist between building design and positive emotional responses as well as behaviourally-relevant perceptions (as examined via interactions in the analyses).Table 5 displays the regression results for the composite measures positive emotions and behaviorally-relevant perceptions for the full sample.There is a statistically significant positive interactive effect between prior arrest and building design on both positive emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions and null findings for individuals' dissatisfaction with their last police stop.Individuals who were arrested before and then exposed to the image of the welcoming building had higher average values of positive emotions (see Figure 1) and behaviourally-relevant perceptions (see Figure 2) than individuals exposed to the same building but without a prior arrest.Table 5 also displays this positive relationship, with main interactive effects showing a statistically significant increase in positive emotions (p < 0.05) and a statistically significant uptick in behaviourally-relevant perceptions (p < 0.01) for the entire sample.Notes.Factor analysis done using polychoric correlation matrix.
Hypothesis 2 argued that the identified impact from H1 (if any) will vary by race and ethnicity. 10As such, a subgroup analysis by race and ethnicity was conducted and Table 6 displays results for regressions on the composite measures of positive emotions and behaviorally-relevant perceptions.There are three significant interactive findings between prior arrest and building design across the models, and null findings for satisfaction with the last police stop.Table 6 and Figure 3 depicts that Black individuals who were arrested (compared to those who have not been arrested) had higher average values of positive emotions when exposed to the welcoming building, yet  slightly lower average values when exposed to the hostile building (p < 0.10).Table 6 and Figure 4 demonstrates that Black individuals who were arrested (compared to those who have not been arrested) had higher average values on behaviourally-relevant perceptions when exposed to the welcoming building, yet lower average values when exposed to the hostile building (p < 0.01).Figure 5 shows a similar trend where White individuals who were arrested (compared to those    who have not been arrested) reported higher average values on behaviourally-relevant perceptions when exposed to the welcoming building, yet lower average values when exposed to the hostile building (p < 0.10).There is no statistically significant interactive relationship between prior arrest and building design for White individuals' positive emotions and Latino individuals' positive emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions.Further, while the main effect of dissatisfaction with last police stops remains statistically significant across all models in Table 6, the interactive effect of dissatisfaction and building design on outcomes for each racial and ethnic subgroup is null.

Summary of results
The findings from these analyses paint a more nuanced picture of the link between criminal justice buildings to emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions.Humane designs, as explored through testing the effects of welcoming police buildings, can be influential to the emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions of the public across racial and ethnic groups (Headley et al. 2021).However, in some cases, this relationship is modified by an individual's past intrusive encounters with law enforcement officials and this effect varies across race and ethnicity.In general, people with a prior arrest respond to more welcoming buildings (versus less welcoming, i.e. hostile buildings) with more positive emotions than those without an arrest experience.Those who experienced a prior arrest are also more likely to report a crime, as measured by behaviourally-relevant perceptions.But, both of these relationships' statistical significance vary by racial group.For instance, there is no significant interactive relationship for Latinos at all.Black individuals with arrest history (compared to Black individuals without an arrest history) respond emotionally and behaviourally more positively to a welcoming police design compared to a hostile design.This finding adds an important qualifier (i.e.arrest history as determinant) to Headley et al.'s (2021) results, which previously showed that Black individuals generally do not respond positively to welcoming settings.Lastly, White individuals with arrest history, compared to their counterparts without arrest histories, only respond behaviourally more positively to the welcoming condition (another point of distinction from the analyses by Headley et al. 2021), whereas prior intrusive police experience as a moderator is insignificant for Latino individuals.

Discussion
Welcoming police station designs are an example of efforts toward a human-centered design and are meant to symbolise that the welfare of all persons are supported by the institution and its representatives.Previous encounters with law enforcement across racial and ethnic subgroups highlight the complexity of architectural design's impact on emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions.
The relationship between welcoming buildings and positive emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions among the public is moderated, in some instances, for Black and White (but not Latino) persons with previous arrest experiences.The finding that there is no relationship between a person's satisfaction with their last police encounter and the study outcomes indicates that the quality or satisfaction of a police encounter may matter less as compared to actual prior intrusive outcomes.Given that prior intrusive encounters, like arrests, between the police and public can foster negative perceptions among the public, the observed moderation effect is noteworthy.One might want the police building to more positively impact the emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions of members of the public who have had arrest encounters with the police as a means to encourage healthy police-community relationships amongst subpopulations with prior negative experiences.Here, the authors' practical and theoretical implications, as well as study limitations are provided.

Practical implications
The argument that the humane design of police buildings may be a viable option for improving relationships between the public and police receives mixed support based on the findings of this study.Districts composed of different racial and ethnic populations or locations with variations in the concentration of persons with prior intrusive police contact may be sensitive to a police station design's role in improving police-community relationships.Simply put, the police station design itself will not impact emotions or perceptions for some groups of the public, but may for others.The ability to impact specific types of perceptions and groups of the public through the design of a station does suggest a need for practitioners, community members, and various stakeholders to collaborate when there are new constructions or changes to the police station design (e.g., inevitable renovations).Decisions around building alterations, which are not historically made in collaboration with communities, should also consider specific emotive and behavioural responses of the public.The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) released a facility planning guideline that articulated the importance of designing police buildings to align with the institution's policing ideology and for these institutions to become a place for both the officer and the community (IACP 2019).In practice, collaborative decision making between the police, public, and various stakeholders would translate into codesigning or coproducing the institutions that govern their jurisdictionsa nod to community policing efforts.Under this premise, community members collaborate with the police as active participants in the wellbeing of and happenings within their neighbourhoods (Brewer and Grabosky 2014), ensuring that decisions align with their values and needs (Schuck 2019).Research yields that the practice of coproduction is essential in fostering healthy relationships, such as coproduction being linked with improvements in social capital (Scott 2002), better public safety and building police-community relations (Renauer et al. 2003).The publics' willingness to coproduce also remains considering various attitudes that members of the public may have toward police (Frank 1996).With effort, police and communities may alter their buildings and the meanings associated with them.To this end, coproduction is essential, given that a human-centered police station design would require that all members and stakeholders of the public be involved in the entire design process.
To be clear, the edifice is but only one component in impacting police-community relationships (as outlined in this study) and is an additive layer or consideration in discussions on police-community relationships, not a replacement to make up for poor treatment by law enforcement.
Building design impacts distinct groups in separate ways.Generally, those with high probabilities of encountering the police buildingindividuals with prior arrest historiesare positively affected by welcoming building designs.In the prioritisation of messaging effects, this would suggest, though only tentatively, that any investments in police construction should consider welcoming design as part of an overall strategy for encouraging positive perceptions of the police among those who have had intrusive police encounters.However, research also suggests those very same buildings could be viewed as antagonistic to racial and ethnic minority communities generally (Headley et al. 2021) and to some of those who have not been arrested before (this present study).This is not a weakness of the strategy of matching buildings to message.Rather, it is indicative of the need for multimodal reform.No strategy impacts communities or individuals uniformly.Police must engage in outreach and symbolic communication that incorporates several modalities to reach diverse constituencies in the ways that impact them most positively.Where constituencies clash, where what 'speaks to' one 'threatens' another, police should mitigate by countering threat perceptions with another strategy (e.g.change in attitude, performance or symbol).

Theoretical implications
Headley et al. (2021) demonstrated that police architecture could have an influence on Black, Latino, and White respondents' affect toward police, wherein 'hostile' architecture elicited positive emotions among Black and Latino persons.Yet, this study shows that the arrested population, when examined through subgroup analyses, yields more nuance and variation when racial group is considered.Though Headley et al. (2021) suggested a need for greater theorising on the racialisation of police buildings (i.e.viewing buildings through a racialized lens), the current findings also suggest the application of a prior 'police encounter' lens and a need for architectural theorising that accounts for personal historical context with law enforcement.Like the study before it, the nuance introduced by these findings suggest that Blount-Hill et al. (2017) only 'scratched the surface' of the link between architecture and affect toward police.At least the mechanisms of race and prior history with the police, and other factors not yet examined, form a complex identity matrix through which predictions of architecture's impact are modified and nullified.Notably, some will critique an endeavour to change police buildings as mere window dressing.Yet buildings are symbolic and material, providing tools for meaning making and informing behaviour (Millie 2012).When paired with changes in action, symbols carrying one connotation may be reinterpreted to mean something else.In other words, the responses to building architecture found in this study are not 'set in stone', placing a responsibility on theorists to further understand the dynamic nature of meaning as it pertains to criminal justice architecture more broadly. 11

Limitation and future research
One limitation in this study is the sample size, beginning with missingness in the data.The sample consisted of 732 participants (253 White,246 Black,and 233 Latino).Across all analytical models (see Table 4) missingness accounted for a loss of four to fourteen persons in the White respondent subsample (6% missingness in model 1 and 2% in model 4), a loss of five to eleven in the Black respondent subsample (5% missingness in model 2 and 2% in model 5), and a loss of three to nine persons in the Latino subsample (4% missingness in model 3 and 1% in model 6).Furthermore, the sample size for interaction analyses were small due to the inability to randomly assign arrest or negative police stop perceptions.Use of a larger sample in the future (i.e., oversampling for these subgroups) may yield more informative study results.
Second, the racial and ethnic variations in results creates additional questions about a humancentered design, primarily who else may benefit from such a design?This study solely focuses on Black, White, and Latino members of the public, but does not consider other social identity groups (e.g., gender or socioeconomic status) or even occupants (e.g. the police officers, the person held in the interrogation room, or the victim reporting their assault).Third, this dovetails into the limitation of reporting a property crime in the hypothetical scenariowould responses vary if individuals were tasked with reporting a sexual assault or if they themselves were being brought to the edifice to be interviewed and/or interrogated?
Fourth, the results beget the question of why and how previous experiences with law enforcement shape variations in emotions and behaviourally-relevant perceptions.For instance, if an onlookers' learning experience of police (whether through direct or indirect encounters) shape how persons interact with various police station designs, what learning experience are of importance (e.g. the type of media or the types of teachings that parents of White, Latino and Black children receive)?It may be that people who were arrested have a unique reference point based on experiences to help identify what a welcoming and hostile police station is, which may further elicit emotional response when viewing a certain design.For example, learning of crime from being a victim, arrested, or viewing media will influence perceptions of the police across racial and ethnic groups (Callanan and Rosenberger 2011).Presumably, learning experiences and perceptions on what is considered welcoming or not will vary across groups, time periods, and place (specific locations).Use of qualitative methods can help identify the underlying mechanisms that explain such differences in perception and emotion.
Fifth, this study included a limited set of moderating variables to capture prior intrusive police experience.A person's (dis)satisfaction with their last police stop was not significantly related to the study outcomes.In this study, the police stop measure does not address the type of police stop or contextual factors (e.g.what initiated the stop or the outcome of the stop), which may be more important than a person's relative dissatisfaction.Additionally, this relationship is tested alongside a binary covariate of arrest history.The arrest measure does not indicate previous arrest frequency.Arguably, the experience of being arrested multiple times may influence how a person responds to questioning about their last encounter with the police, even if it was a pleasant one (a potential influence on the dissatisfaction measure).Subsequent investigations should control for the effects of distinct police encounters, the context of police stops, and include frequency measures of arrest experiences.
Sixth, building on measurement, this study's analyses of police edifices took root in Headley and colleagues (2021) composite measure for a welcoming police design (as defined by OTI).However, to the extent there is a need for a new scale for welcoming or even the need for a different type of police station design under the human-centered design umbrella, one must acknowledge that the fruits of these analyses are confined by the OTI conceptualisation and prior scale.Future research may consider whether there are select features of the police station that are most influential in impacting public emotions and perceptions; and if such features are proxies for other constructs (e.g.OTI police buildings may represent newer or more recently renovated police buildings).Relatedly, it would be beneficial to have welcoming and hostile buildings that hold constant modern architectural advances.
A seventh potential limitation is that two out of the three identified relationships were marginally significant, falling in the p value range between .05 and .10(Pritschet et al. 2016).Specifically, Table 6 shows marginally significant results for the findings that previous police encounters moderate the impact of police architecture on the behaviourally-relevant perceptions of White respondents and the positive emotions of Black respondents.An inherent limitation of marginally significant relationships is a fundamental understanding that a higher p value is typically associated with more false positives (Olsson-Collentine et al. 2019) meaning that relationships discovered that are closest to a p value of .001are least likely to falsely reject null hypotheses.This statistical premise dictates the evidential value of reported findings (Vogel and Homberg 2021), as such one should have the most confidence in the findings of this study that fall below the lowest p value cut-off points.
Though one focus of this paper is the symbolic effects of police buildings, there are alternative frameworks that further explain how police building impact the public.Consider theoretical frameworks of materiality in exploring the way in which police buildings act upon those who enter into the building, including the occupants within the station as well as members of the public who approach the building.Diphoorn (2019) describes the material turn, or the acknowledgement and scientific inquiry into the role that objects have on human actions.Through a lens of materiality, an inanimate object like the police station may act upon the lives of the public through socio-material interactions (Goldsmith et al. 2022).Such interactions occur through the human senses of smell, sight, and more (McClanahan and South 2020), as observed in atmospheric policing strategies that use the object of air to control public behaviours (Linnemann and Turner 2022).If the end goal of a welcoming police station is to symbolise and communicate to the public that this is a place where one will be treated humanely, then an equally salient action is to ensure that the material conditions and other aspects of the police station (e.g.culture within or access to resources) reflect this message.For example, the materiality of police detentions impact perceptions of dignified treatment among persons who are confined, but this relationship is modified by non-material aspects, like a person detained by the police having autonomy over themselves (Skinns et al. 2020).
Collectively, human-centered design of criminal justice buildings offers more items to consider than immediate solutions, which is expected given the novelty of such research.In this study, it is observed that welcoming police station designs are most influential on persons within the community who have past intrusive encounters with police officers (i.e., arrests) across certain racial and ethnic groups.However, the authors emphasize the need for further investigation into: (1) other individual-level and societal characteristics (e.g.gender or class) and frameworks (e.g.materiality); (2) a qualitative understanding of why certain groups vary in their responses to certain designs; and (3) how investments into police station design may pull resources away from other proven police-community relationship building strategies (i.e., are the potential benefits worth the costs relative to other reform and transformation strategies?).

Notes
1.The lengthy history of misuse of police power against Black and Brown people in the U.S. shape a geographically unique set of public perceptions and feelings about law enforcement in the country.2. Emotions in Headley et al. (2021), encompass feelings that a person has when faced with specific police station designs (e.g., would you feel nervous approaching this building?).Behaviourally relevant perceptions capture beliefs and attitudes that imply whether some direct action be taken or not (e.g., would you enter such a building?)with regard to reporting the property crime.3. The 8th amendment delineates that correctional institutions cannot subject persons to cruel and unusual punishment; the 4th amendment protects the public from unreasonable searches and seizures from law enforcement and other government officials; and the 6th and 14th amendments combine to ensure that all persons are not deprived of life, liberty, or property by the court without due process.4. The Headley et al. (2021) scale was piloted on a MTurk sample where several buildings were selected for participants to rate across a series of OTI dimensions.The buildings varied in features (e.g., small windows vs. large windows, linear vs. curved designs, buildings that were several stories high or only one level, and buildings with exposed brick layering).Using exploratory factor analyses, the authors classified buildings as welcoming or hostile. 5. Legitimacy here is defined simply as 'the state of being accepted as authoritative' (Blount-Hill 2020, p. 115;Blount-Hill and Gau 2022).6.For more information on the NORC AmeriSpeak® Panel Sampling Frame see AmeriSpeak (2022).7. Property crimes are more common occurrences in the U.S. and slightly less reported when compared to violent crime (Gramlich 2020)thus, focusing on property crime enhances realism for the survey participant.8. To ensure that the random assignment produced similar subgroups across conditions, chi-square tests of independence for the entire sample on key sociodemographic, political and experiential characteristics were used.Results support a rejection of the null hypothesis of independence in all analyses except for political party identification.
9. In the full sample, 730 respondents (out of 732 total) responded to this question, with 384 reporting very or somewhat satisfied, 122 reporting neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 142 reporting very or somewhat dissatisfied and 82 reporting not applicable because they had not been stopped by the police before.10.Stepwise regression models (Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald 2013) were also conducted to first understand the main effects of prior intrusive police experience on the outcomes of interest and then to understand the interaction between prior experience and building design before conducting the subgroup analyses with the interaction.However, for the purpose of this paper, only the results from the full models are displayed.11.For example, contexts outside the U.S. where racial tensions are not as prevalent and visible, may not have a similar set of relationships that exist across racial groupings and building design.Depending on the region, it may be more likely to have tensions that exist across other social groupings like ethnicity, nationality, religion, caste, or class.The police cannot be trusted to make the right decisions.
The police generally have the same sense of right and wrong as I do.
Q22. Think back to the last time you were stopped by the police.How satisfied were you with the way they treated you?
. Very satisfied (1) . Somewhat satisfied (2) . Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (3) .Somewhat dissatisfied (4) .Very dissatisfied (5) .Not applicable because I have not been stopped by the police before (6) Instructions: Finally, we're going to ask you about your experiences with the criminal justice system.
Q23. Have you ever been inside a police department?

Table 1 .
Balance Test Descriptive Statistics.

Table 2 .
Descriptive Statistics for Outcome Measures.

Table 3 .
Summary of Factor Analysis Using Principal Factors Method and Varimax Rotation.

Table 4 .
Summary of Factor Analysis Using Principal Factors Method and Varimax Rotation.

Table 5 .
Interaction Effects Main Analysis.

Table 6 .
Interaction Effects Racial and Ethnic Subgroup Analysis.
Q1-9.Indicate the likelihood that you would feel the following emotions and/or sentiments: I would feel … Q12.How likely are you to proceed in entering the police department?Instructions: We're going to ask you about your perceptions of the criminal justice system.Q13-21.Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statement: It is my moral duty to back the decisions made by the police because the police are legitimate authorities.The police care about the well-being of everyone they deal with.It is my moral duty to do what the police tell me even if I do not understand or agree with the reasons.