Crime &Delinquency, Ahead of Print.
Despite widespread calls to defund or reform police, little research has explored the factors shaping public support for these proposals. We draw from person-centered morality theory to argue that person-centered moral evaluations of police (moral character beliefs) drive support for defunding police, while act-based moral evaluations of police (procedural justice) drive support for reforming police. Using data from a national survey (N = 1,225), exploratory factor analyses showed that these moral evaluations of police were empirically distinct. OLS regression results indicated that perceptions of “bad police” (negative person-centered evaluations) more strongly predicted support for defunding policies (abolition and reduced funding of police), while perceptions of “bad policing” (negative act-based evaluations) more strongly predicted support for due process and racial justice reforms.