Does Institutional Transparency Affect Citizen Trust in Predictive Policing? Evidence From a Survey‐Experiment in The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Police organizations increasingly use predictive algorithms for surveillance, raising privacy concerns and potentially decreasing citizen trust in these prominent policing tools. This paper investigates whether two dimensions of institutional transparency, transparency about legislation and external monitoring, can influence trust in predictive policing. Using a representative survey experiment with 877 Dutch citizens, we find that disclosing how police's use of predictive algorithms is monitored by an external oversight agency significantly increased citizen trust, while providing details about predictive policing legislation did not. The findings highlight the importance of external monitoring in safeguarding citizen trust regarding police use of predictive algorithms, offering insights for policymakers and law enforcement. Furthermore, this paper provides a theoretical and methodological framework for conceptualizing and investigating institutional transparency in the context of algorithmic governance.