Jonathan Jackson | London School of Economics and Political Science (original) (raw)

Books by Jonathan Jackson

The enormous financial cost of criminal justice has motivated increased scrutiny and recognition ... more The enormous financial cost of criminal justice has motivated increased scrutiny and recognition of the need for constructive change, but what of the ethical costs of current practices and policies? Moreover, if we seriously value the principles of liberal democracy then there is no question that the ethics of criminal justice are everybody's business, concerns for the entire society. The Routledge Handbook of Criminal Justice Ethics brings together international scholars to explore the most signiicant ethical issues throughout their many areas of expertise, anchoring their discussions in the empirical realities of the issues faced rather than applying moral theory at a distance. Contributions from philosophers, legal scholars, criminologists and psychologists bring a fresh and interdisciplinary approach to the eld. The Handbook is divided into three parts: Part I addresses the core issues concerning criminal sanction, the moral and political aspects of the justiication of punishment, and the relationship between law and morality. Part II examines criminalization and criminal liability, and the assumptions and attitudes shaping those aspects of contemporary criminal justice. Part III evaluates current policies and practices of criminal procedure, exploring the roles of police, prosecutors, judges, and juries and suggesting directions for revising how criminal justice is achieved. Throughout, scholars seek pathways for change and suggest new solutions to address the central concerns of criminal justice ethics. This book is an ideal resource for upper-undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in criminal justice ethics, criminology, and criminal justice theory, and also for students of philosophy interested in punishment, law and society, and law and ethics.

What does it mean to trust the police? What makes the police legitimate in the eyes of the police... more What does it mean to trust the police? What makes the police legitimate in the eyes of the policed? What builds trust, legitimacy and cooperation, and what undermines the bond between police and the public? These questions are central to current debates concerning the relationship between the British police and the public it serves. Yet, in the context of British policing they are seldom asked explicitly, still less examined in depth. Drawing on psychological and sociological explanatory paradigms, Just Authority presents a cutting-edge empirical study into public trust, police legitimacy, and people’s readiness to cooperate with officers. It represents, first, the most detailed test to date of Tom Tyler’s procedural justice model attempted outside the United States. Second, it uncovers the social ecology of trust and legitimacy. Third, it describes the relationships between trust, legitimacy and cooperation.

This book contains many important lessons for practitioners, policy-makers and academics. As elsewhere the dominant vision of policing in Great Britain continues to stress instrumental effectiveness: the ‘fight against crime’ will be won by pro-active and even aggressive policing. In line with work from the United States and elsewhere, Just Authority casts significant doubt on such claims. When people find policing to be unfair, disrespectful and careless of human dignity, not only is trust lost, legitimacy is also damaged and cooperation is withdrawn as a result. Absent such public support, the job of the police is made harder and the avowed objectives of less crime and disorder placed ever further from reach.

Papers by Jonathan Jackson

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014

Police legitimacy is an important topic of criminological research, yet it has received only spor... more Police legitimacy is an important topic of criminological research, yet it has received only sporadic study in societies where there is widespread police corruption, where the position of the police is less secure, and where social order is more tenuous. Analysing data from a probability sample survey of adults in Lahore, Pakistan, we examine the empirical links between people's experience of police corruption, their perceptions of the fairness and effectiveness of the police, and their beliefs about the legitimacy of the police. Our findings suggest that in a context in which minimal effectiveness and integrity is yet to be established, police legitimacy may rest not just on the procedural fairness of officers, but also on their demonstrated ability to control crime and avoid corruption.

Nature Human Behavior, 2021

While scholarly attention to date has focused almost entirely on individual-level drivers of vacc... more While scholarly attention to date has focused almost entirely on individual-level drivers of vaccine confidence, we show that macro-level factors play an important role in understanding individual propensity to be confident about vaccination. We analyse data from the 2018 Wellcome Global Monitor survey covering over 120,000 respondents in 126 countries to assess how societal-level trust in science is related to vaccine confidence. In countries with a high aggregate level of trust in science, people are more likely to be confident about vaccination, over and above their individual-level scientific trust. Additionally, we show that societal consensus around trust in science moderates these individual-level and country-level relationships. In countries with a high level of consensus regarding the trustworthiness of science and scientists, the positive correlation between trust in science and vaccine confidence is stronger than it is in comparable countries where the level of social consensus is weaker.

Tempo Social, 2021

We review the concepts of legitimacy, trust, and legal cynicism in the context of the debate abou... more We review the concepts of legitimacy, trust, and legal cynicism in the context of the debate about police legitimacy, discuss the extent to which these concepts relate to each other, and offer some early, speculative thoughts on how a relational model of legitimacy can extend beyond procedural justice concerns. Relying upon procedural justice theory, we emphasise the distinction between police legitimacy and legitimation: popular legitimacy is defined as public beliefs that legal authority has the right to rule (people acknowledge the moral appropriateness of legal authority) and the authority to govern (people recognise legal authority as the rightful authority), whereas legitimation is related to the criteria people use to judge the normative appropriateness of legal agents’ exercise of power (e.g., the extent to which police officers are trustworthy to behave in accordance with people’s normative expectations). Building on studies on legal cynicism and legal socialisation, we consider how other aspects of police conduct can send negative relational messages about people’s value within society and undermine their judgements about the legitimacy of legal authority – messages of oppression, marginalisation, and neglect over the life course. We conclude suggesting avenues for future research on public-police relations.

Law & Human Behavior, 2021

Objective:We conducted an exploratory study testing procedural justice theory with a novel popula... more Objective:We conducted an exploratory study testing procedural justice theory with a novel population. Weassessed the extent to which police procedural justice, effectiveness, legitimacy, and perceived risk ofsanction predict compliance with the law among people experiencing homelessness.Hypotheses:We didnot develop formal a priori hypotheses but examinedfive general research questions. First, are there positiveassociations between police procedural justice, police legitimacy, and compliance? Second, do proceduraljustice and legitimacy differentially predict compliance, depending on the particular type of offending?Third, are there positive associations between police effectiveness, perceived risk of sanction, andcompliance? Fourth, does the perceived risk of sanction differentially predict compliance, dependingon the particular type of offending? Andfifth, are there positive associations between moral judgmentsabout different offending behaviors and compliance?Method:Two hundred people (87% male, 49% aged45–64, 37% White British) experiencing homelessness on the streets of an inner London borough completeda survey that included measures of procedural justice, police legitimacy, perceived risk of sanction,morality, and compliance with the law.Results:Procedural justice and police legitimacy were only weakly(and not significantly) associated with any of the three types of compliance (compliance with lawsprohibiting low-level crimes, behaviors specific to the street population, and high-level crimes). Policeeffectiveness positively predicted compliance via perceived risk of sanction, but only for street-population-specific offenses that can be important for survival on the streets, such as begging and sleeping in certainlocalities. Morality was positively associated with all three types of compliance behaviors. Supplementaryanalyses suggested a small amount of instability in the results, however, possibly because of the relativelysmall sample size.Conclusions:The lack of relevant relational connections to legal authority may explainwhy procedural fairness and perceptions of police legitimacy were not particularly important predictors ofcompliance in this context. More research is needed into the types of marginalized communities for whomstructural factors of alienation and lack of access to resources may serve to reduce normative groupconnections. Future work should test whether the need to survive on the streets leads people to discountsome social and relational constraints to behavior, making people (almost by definition) more instrumentalin relation to law and law enforcement.

LSE Public Policy Review, 2021

How do social norms and legal requirements combine to shape collective behaviour? A multi-wave te... more How do social norms and legal requirements combine to shape collective behaviour? A multi-wave ten-city panel study set during the first UK lockdown finds that compliance was a powerful in-group signalling device, driven by the expressive and coordinating power of formal and informal rules. COVID-19 pandemic laws allowed the Government to operate as an expressive agent, telling people what needed to be done and why. Acting upon mutual expectations for the common good then helped people to coordinate against the virus with a sense of a shared fate and identity. Widespread collective compliance allowed the police to continue to privilege engagement, explanation and encouragement over heavy-handed enforcement tactics that damage their popular legitimacy.

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2021

Social identity is a core aspect of procedural justice theory, which predicts that fair treatment... more Social identity is a core aspect of procedural justice theory, which predicts that fair treatment at the hands of power holders such as police expresses, communicates, and generates feelings of inclusion, status, and belonging within salient social categories. In turn, a sense of shared group membership with power holders, with police officers as powerful symbolic representatives of "law-abiding society," engenders trust, legitimacy, and cooperation. Yet, this aspect of the theory is rarely explicitly considered in empirical research. Moreover, the theory rests on the underexamined assumption that the police represent one fixed and stable superordinate group, including the often-marginalized people with whom they interact, and that it is only superordinate identification that is important to legitimacy and cooperation. In this article, we present results from two U.K.-based studies that explore the identity dynamics of procedural justice theory. We reason that the police not only represent the "law-abiding, national citizen" superordinate group but also are a symbol of order/conflict and a range of connected social categories that can generate relational identification. First, we used a general-population sample and found that relational identification with police and identification as a law-abiding citizen mediated some of the association between procedural justice and legitimacy and were both stronger predictors of cooperation than legitimacy. Second, a sample of people living on the streets of London was used to explore these same relationships among a highly marginalized group for whom the police might represent a salient outgroup. We found that relational and superordinate identification were both strong positive predictors of cooperation, whereas legitimacy was not. These results have important implications for our understanding of both police legitimacy and public cooperation, as well as the extent to which police activity can serve to include-or exclude-members of the public.

SocArXiv, 2020

Worry about COVID-19 is a central topic of research into the social and economic consequences of ... more Worry about COVID-19 is a central topic of research into the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Worry can be a negative and debilitating experience that damages mental health and discourages healthy re-engagement with the world, but it can also be a problem-solving activity, directing people's attention to problems, and encouraging them to act accordingly. We present in this paper a way of measuring worry about catching COVID-19 that distinguishes between "functional fear" and "dysfunctional fear." Drawing on work into fear of crime, our classification divides people into three groups: (1) the unworried, (2) the functionally worried (adaptive emotions encourage proactive behaviours to reduce the chance of infection) and (3) the dysfunctionally worried (quality of life is damaged by the emotional experience or taking ineffective or damaging precautions). Analysing data from two waves of a longitudinal panel study of over 1,000 individuals living in ten cities in England, Scotland and Wales, we find differing levels of negative anxiety, anger, loneliness, unhappiness and life satisfaction for each of the three groups, with dysfunctionally worried experiencing the most negative outcomes and functionally worried experiencing less negative outcomes than unworried. We find no difference between groups in compliance and willingness to re-engage in social life. Finally, we compare perceptions of risk (differentiating between likelihood, control and consequence) for each group, and find a difference between the dysfunctionally worried compared with functional and unworried groups. Our findings inform what sort of content-targeted messaging aimed at reducing dysfunctional 2 worry might wish to promote. We conclude with some thoughts on the applicability of our measurement scheme for future research.

Law & Human Behavior, 2020

Objectives Drawing on recent work in policing and organizational psychology, we examined factors ... more Objectives Drawing on recent work in policing and organizational psychology, we examined factors related to openness to organizational change and to adopting evidence-based interview techniques among law enforcement investigators. Hypotheses We hypothesized that a procedurally fair organizational climate would predict outcomes tied to organizational change, mediated by organizational identification and perceived legitimacy. We also predicted that procedural justice factors would be stronger predictors than outcome-oriented factors (i.e., rewards and sanctions). Methods Study 1 surveyed law enforcement investigators (N = 711) about their attitudes towards and behaviors within their organization (i.e., perceived procedural fairness of one's organization, identification, legitimacy, compliance, empowerment, and extra-role behavior). Study 2 conceptually extended this survey to interviewers (N = 71) trained in a new, evidence-based interviewing approach adding likelihood of future use of the novel interviewing approach as an outcome. Results In Study 1, the more investigators thought their organization had a procedurally fair climate, the more they identified with the organization and perceived it as legitimate. Framing compliance, empowerment and extra-role behavior as associated with openness to change, we found that legitimacy predicted compliance and tendency toward extra-role behavior (i.e., going "above and beyond"), while level of identification predicted feelings of empowerment and extra-role behavior. Study 2, partially replicated findings from Study 1, and found that motivation to attend the training also predicted likelihood of future use. Conclusions These studies highlight the value of a procedurally just organizational climate framework in understanding law enforcement interrogators' propensity towards implementing new evidence-based interrogation techniques. Public Significance Statement Our findings suggest that organizations with a procedurally fair organizational climate will be most successful at implementing programs of change. In particular, procedural fairness within law enforcement organizations is important to consider when implementing programs of change, especially evidence-based training.

UCL JDI COVID-19 Special Papers, 2020

Compliance with lockdown restrictions (e.g. social distancing) is important if the Covid-19 pande... more Compliance with lockdown restrictions (e.g. social distancing) is important if the Covid-19 pandemic is to be brought under control. In a liberal democratic state, the bulk of such compliance has to be voluntary and consensual. Thus far, this seems to have been the case in the UK, with police intervention rarely necessary. However, police are needed in a minority of cases, and lockdown fatigue and the easing of restrictions over the coming weeks and months may pose significant challenges to police organisations tasked with both enforcement and maintaining widespread voluntary compliance. What we know about policing and compliance, and how we know it People have many reasons for complying with laws and regulations, but the most commonly cited are: • Moral judgements, e.g. believing a behaviour proscribed by law is wrong • Group solidarity and a desire to uphold social norms • The legitimacy of the rule-maker/enforcer-a moral duty to obey the law and police • Habit-we do what we are used to do • Deterrence-fear of the legal consequences if one were to break the law • Self-protection/self-interest Academic research over several decades has found support for most of the above, although there are important caveats. Notably, deterrence-related factors (fear and severity of punishment) have been shown to be only weakly correlated with compliance in many situations. The risk of getting caught can be important in some circumstances, for some people, at some times. The severity of sanction appears almost irrelevant-increasing fines and prison-terms appears to have very little effect on behaviour. Morality, social bonds, legitimacy and habit are far stronger predictors of compliance behaviours. Research on what police can do to motivate compliance with the law has similarly tended to conclude that presenting a credible deterrent threat has only a weak and inconsistent effect. While some forms of activity, e.g. hotspots policing, do appear to motivate compliance among target populations-and presumably do so via some sort of deterrent effect-evidence for a positive effect on crime in most other areas is thin. Indeed, invasive police powers such as stop and search have proven to be largely ineffective, with significant negative collateral consequences including reduced trust and engagement. Instead, a consistent and growing body of work suggests that police activity experienced as procedurally just (respectful, open and accountable, explaining decisions and listening to people, making unbiased decisions, and conveying trustworthy motives) can motivate compliance, and does so in a way that is more sustainable and durable than the presentation of deterrent threat. Procedural justice enhances the legitimacy of the police and the wider justice system and, relatedly, strengthens the social bonds between individuals, justice actors and the wider social groups within which both are embedded. Both legitimacy and social bonds shape, in turn, compliance with police directives and the law. What we think is happening in the covid-19 pandemic In the first weeks of the lockdown the restrictions put in place to combat Covid-19 seem to command widespread and committed support. High levels of compliance appear to be driven primarily by a sense that (a) it is right to comply with the restrictions to 'save lives and protect the NHS', (b) it is normative to do so (i.e. other people are complying and would expect the same of you), and (c) it is a legal requirement (invoking the law reinforces the collective need to take distancing seriously). The police have also benefitted from increased public support for frontline staff and 'key workers'. Naturally, instrumental concerns, especially fear of infection may also play a role, although there is limited evidence of this.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2020

Objectives: Test whether cooperation with the police can be modelled as a placed-based norm that ... more Objectives: Test whether cooperation with the police can be modelled as a placed-based norm that varies in strength from one neighborhood to the next. Estimate whether police legitimacy predicts willingness to cooperate in weak-norm neighborhoods, but not in strong-norm neighborhoods, where most people are willing to cooperate (or not to cooperate) irrespective of their perceptions of police legitimacy.

Methods: A survey of 1,057 individuals in 98 relatively high-crime neighborhoods defined at a small spatial scale measured (a) willingness to cooperate using a hypothetical crime vignette and (b) legitimacy using indicators of normative alignment between police and citizen values. A mixed-effects, location-scale model estimated the cluster-level mean and cluster-level variance of willingness to cooperate as a neighborhood-level latent variable. A cross-level interaction tested whether legitimacy predicts individual-level willingness to cooperate only in neighborhoods where the norm is weak.

Results: Willingness to cooperate clustered strongly by neighborhood. There were neighborhoods with (i) high mean and low variance, (ii) high mean and high variance, (iii) (relatively) low mean and low variance, and (iv) (relatively) low mean and high variance. Legitimacy was only a positive predictor of cooperation in neighborhoods that had a (relatively) low mean and high variance. There was little variance left to explain in neighborhoods where the norm was strong.

Conclusions: Findings support a boundary condition of procedural justice theory: namely, cooperation can be modelled as a placed-based norm that varies in strength from neighborhood to neighborhood and legitimacy only predicts cooperation in neighborhoods where the norm is relatively weak.

Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2020

Objectives: To test whether normative and non-normative forms of obligation to obey the police ar... more Objectives: To test whether normative and non-normative forms of obligation to obey the police are empirically distinct and to assess whether they exhibit different dynamics in terms of the downstream effects of police-citizen contact. To draw an empirically informed conclusion as to whether police legitimacy can be partly defined as a normatively grounded form of obligation to obey the police. Methods: The Scottish Community Engagement Trial of procedurally just policing had a putative but unexpectedly negative causal effect. To help extract value from the study we use a natural effect model for causally ordered mediators to assess causal pathways that include-but also extend beyond-the experimental treatment to procedural justice. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that normative and non-normative forms of obligation are empirically distinct. Causal mediation analysis suggests that normative obligation to obey the police is sensitive to subjectively experienced procedurally just or unjust police behaviour and influences cooperation with the police and traffic law compliance in a way that is consistent with procedural justice theory (PJT). Non-normative obligation to obey the police is 'sticky' and unresponsive: it does not transmit the impact of the contact on either cooperation or compliance with traffic laws, and it is weakly and negatively correlated with normative obligation to obey the police (despite having moderately strong negative correlations with procedural justice and personal sense of power). Conclusions: Scholars have argued that criminologists have conflated normative and non-normative forms of felt obligation to obey police commands and that obligation should consequently be treated as an outcome of legitimacy rather than a constituent part of legitimacy. Findings indicate that legitimacy can reasonably be defined partly as normative obligation in the Scottish road-user context, so long as it is measured properly. More research into the dynamics of non-normative obligation to obey the police is needed.

Psychology, Crime & Law

Under what conditions do people support police use of force? In this paper we assess some of the ... more Under what conditions do people support police use of force? In this paper we assess some of the empirical links between police legitimacy, political ideology (right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation), and support for 'reasonable' use of force (e.g. an officer striking a citizen in self-defence) and 'excessive' use of force (e.g. an officer using violence to arrest an unarmed person who is not offering violent resistance). Analyzing data from an online survey with US participants (n=186) we find that legitimacy is a positive predictor of reasonable but not excessive police use of force, and that political ideology predicts support for excessive but not reasonable use of force. We conclude with the idea that legitimacy places normative constraints around police power. On the one hand, legitimacy is associated with increased support for the use of force, but only when violence is bounded within certain acceptable limits. On the other hand, excessive use of force seems to require an extra-legal justification that is – at least in our analysis – partly ideological. Our findings open up a new direction of research in what is currently a rather sparse psychological literature on the ability of legitimacy to 'tame' coercive power.

British Journal of Criminology, 2020

Facial recognition technology is just one of a suite of new digital tools police and other securi... more Facial recognition technology is just one of a suite of new digital tools police and other security providers around the world are adopting in an effort to function more safely and efficiently. This paper reports results from a major new London-based study exploring public responses to Live Facial Recognition (LFR): a technology that enables police to carry out real-time automated identity checks in public spaces. We find that public trust and legitimacy are important factors predicting acceptance or rejection of LFR. Crucially, trust and particularly legitimacy may serve to alleviate privacy concerns about police use of this technology. In an era where police use of new digital technologies is only likely to increase, these findings have important implications for police-public relations and how the 'public voice' is fed into debates.

Procedural Justice and Relational Theory: Philosophical, Empirical and Legal Perspectives, 2020

This chapter begins with an empirical analysis of attitudes towards the law, which, in turn, insp... more This chapter begins with an empirical analysis of attitudes towards the law, which, in turn, inspires a philosophical re-examination of the moral status of the rule of law. In Section 2, we empirically analyse nationally representative survey data from the US about law-related attitudes and legal compliance. Although the survey, and the completion of our study, preceded the recent anti-police brutality mass protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, the relevance of our observations extends to this recent development and its likely reverberations in terms of police legitimacy. Consistently with prior studies, we find that people’s ascriptions of legitimacy to the legal system (labelled here ‘legitimacy’) are predicted strongly by their perceptions of the procedural justice and lawfulness of police and court officials’ action. Two factors emerge as significant predictors of people’s compliance with the law: (i) their belief that they have a (content-independent, moral) duty to obey the law (which is one element of legitimacy, as defined here); and (ii) their moral assessment of the content of specific legal requirements (referred to here as ‘perceived moral content of laws’). We also observe an interactive relationship between these two factors. At higher levels of perceived moral content of laws, felt duty to obey is a better predictor of compliance than it is at lower levels. And, similarly, perceived moral content of laws is a better predictor of compliance at higher levels of felt duty to obey. This suggests that the moral content incorporated in specific laws interacts with the normative force people ascribe to legal authorities by virtue of other qualities, specifically here procedural justice and lawfulness. In Section 3, the focus shifts to a philosophical analysis, whereby we identify a parallel (similarly interactive) modality in the way that form and content mutually affect the value of the rule of law. We advocate a distinctive alternative to two rival approaches in jurisprudential discourse, the first of which claims that Lon Fuller’s eight precepts of legality embody moral qualities not contingent on the law’s content, while the second denies any independent moral value in these eight precepts, viewing them as entirely subservient to the law’s substantive goals. In contrast, on the view put forward here, Fuller’s principles possess (inter alia) an expressive moral quality, but their expressive effect does not materialise in isolation from other, contextual factors. In particular, the extent to which it materialises is partly sensitive to the moral quality of law’s content.

Law and Human Behavior, Feb 27, 2018

This paper expands previous conceptualizations of appropriate police behavior beyond procedural j... more This paper expands previous conceptualizations of appropriate police behavior beyond procedural justice. The focus of the current study is on the notion of bounded authority – i.e. acting within the limits of one’s rightful authority. According to work on legal socialization, US citizens come to acquire three dimensions of values that determine how authorities ought to behave: (a) neutral, consistent and transparent decision-making; (b) interpersonal treatment that conveys respect, dignity and concern; and (c) respecting the limits of one’s rightful power. Using survey data from a nationally representative sample of US adults, we show that concerns over bounded authority, respectful treatment, and neutral decision-making combine to form a strong predictor of police and legal legitimacy. We also find that legal legitimacy is associated with greater compliance behavior, controlling for personal morality and perceived likelihood of sanctions. We discuss the implications of a boundary perspective with respect to ongoing debates over the appropriate scope of police power and the utility of concentrated police activities. We also highlight the need for further research specifically focused on the psychological mechanisms underlying the formation of boundaries and why they shape the legitimacy of the police and law.

Psychology of Violence

Objective Why do people justify intergroup violence? In this paper we examine attitudes towards v... more Objective Why do people justify intergroup violence? In this paper we examine attitudes towards violence perpetrated by indigenous activists to claim for rights and violence by pólice officers against indigenous people. We assess the role that perceived pólice legitimacy, procedurally just policing towards the indigenous minority group and group identity play in the justification of intergroup violence. Method We present findings from two surveys (Study 1, n=1493, Study 2, n=198) and an experiment (Study 3, n=76) conducted among indigenous people in Chile. Studies 1 and 2 measure perceptions of police procedural justice towards indigenous people. Study 3 manipulates the fairness with which police officers treat indigenous people. Effects of procedural justice on police legitimacy (Studies 2 and 3) and attitudes towards violence for social change and social control (Studies 1-3) are analyzed. Result Higher perceptions of procedurally just policing towards indigenous people predict more support for police violence and less support for violence perpetrated by indigenous activists. These effects are mediated by perceived police legitimacy and moderated by identification with the minority group. Among people who identify strongly with their indigenous group, perceiving high procedural justice predicts greater police legitimacy, greater support for police violence, and lesser support for violence perpetrated by indigenous activists. Conclusions Findings contribute to an emerging literature on the roles of procedural justice and legitimacy in violence perceptions. Fair, respectful and neutral treatment of pólice officers may reduce the support for violence among minority group members and increase trust in the violence used by police officers.

British Journal of Criminology

Procedural justice theory predicts a relationship between police behavior, individuals' normative... more Procedural justice theory predicts a relationship between police behavior, individuals' normative evaluation of police, and decisions to comply with laws. Yet, prior studies of procedural justice have rather narrowly defined the potentially relevant predicates of police behavior. This study expands the scope of procedural justice theory by considering a broad array of policing components, including unobserved actions such as electronic surveillance, respecting the limits of one's legal authority, and the unequal or equal distribution of policing resources between different groups. Analyzing data from a national probability sample of adults in England and Wales, we (a) present a comprehensive investigation of the heterogeneous elements of policing related to legitimacy judgments and (b) contribute to debate about the nature of legitimacy.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014

Nature Human Behavior, 2021

Tempo Social, 2021

Law & Human Behavior, 2021

LSE Public Policy Review, 2021

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2021

SocArXiv, 2020

Law & Human Behavior, 2020

UCL JDI COVID-19 Special Papers, 2020

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2020

Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2020

Psychology, Crime & Law

British Journal of Criminology, 2020

Procedural Justice and Relational Theory: Philosophical, Empirical and Legal Perspectives, 2020

Law and Human Behavior, Feb 27, 2018

Psychology of Violence

British Journal of Criminology

Social Psychology and Justice (Frontiers of Social Psychology) edited by E. Allan Lind, 2019

We consider three new directions of research into police-citizen authority relations: (a) the sub... more We consider three new directions of research into police-citizen authority relations: (a) the subjectivity of fairness perception, (b) the mechanisms linking procedural justice to legitimacy, and (c) statistical methods to estimate causal mechanisms. First, police fairness may be a subjective experience and perception motivated by a range of individual and environmental factors: we outline a motivation cognition framework of fairness perception (Barclay et al., 2017) that revolves around people 'reading' the dynamics of an encounter with the police in a way that is shaped by instrumental, relational and moral motives, with directional and non-directional goals. Second, the causal effect of procedural justice on legitimacy may partly be transmitted by social identity and personal sense of power and autonomy. Third, causal mediation analysis is complex and we show how to decompose the average treatment effect in a way that allows for the estimation of causally mediating and moderating effects, provided that certain causal identifying assumptions are satisfied (VanderWeele, 2014).

This paper examines the extent to which police legitimacy and social identity explain variation i... more This paper examines the extent to which police legitimacy and social identity explain variation in public acceptance of police use of force. We assess (a) whether there is an association between legitimacy and public acceptance of apparently illegal or unethical police action and (b) the extent to which identification with a particular social group predicts judgments of police behavior. The study draws upon cross-sectional data from a 2015 survey of a representative sample of adults in England & Wales. Structural equation modeling is used to model conditional correlations between latent constructs, and there are two main findings. First, identifying more strongly with a social group that the police may be seen to represent was consistently associated with greater acceptance of police use of force, whether or not that force seemed to be justified. Second, beliefs about the legitimacy of the police were associated with acceptance, but primarily only in relation to the use of force in situations where it appeared prima facie justifiable. These results suggest one possible set of reasons why police retain public support in the face of scandals concerning excessive use of force.

Annual Review of Law and Social Science

This article reviews the international evidence on the potential nature, sources, and consequence... more This article reviews the international evidence on the potential nature, sources, and consequences of police and legal legitimacy. In brief, I find that procedural justice is the strongest predictor of police legitimacy in most of the countries under investigation, although normative judgements about fair process may—in some contexts—be crowded out by public concerns about police effectiveness and corruption, the scale of the crime problem, and the association of the police with a historically oppressive and underperforming state. Legitimacy tends to be linked to people’s willingness to cooperate with the police, with only a small number of national exceptions. There is also a fair amount of evidence that people who say they feel a moral duty to obey the law tend also to report complying with the law in the past or intending to comply with the law in the future. The main argument is, however, that international enthusiasm for testing procedural justice theory is outpacing methodological rigor and theoretical clarity. On the one hand, the lack of attention to methodological equivalence is holding back the development of a properly comparative cross-national analysis. On the other hand, the literature would benefit from (a) greater delineation between legitimation (the bases on which citizens judge the rightfulness of an institution) and legitimacy (the acceptance or rejection of the rightfulness of an institution and the normatively grounded duty to obey), (b) stronger differentiation between police and legal legitimacy, and (c) more attention given to isolating the mechanisms through which rightfulness and consent motivate cooperation and compliance.

Policing & Society

How People Judge Policing is an original and gripping book with a plethora of excellent examples ... more How People Judge Policing is an original and gripping book with a plethora of excellent examples showing how procedural justice is understood, voiced and evaluated by ordinary citizens and the police alike. It urges its readers to use novel methods both to generate new hypotheses and to answer existing research questions, which is why we recommend it as an exceptional read for criminologists, policymakers, and the police. This volume is a thought-provoking and memorable swansong for the primary author, whose contributions are already sorely missed from policing research.