Legitimating Practices: Revisiting the Predicates of Police Legitimacy (original) (raw)
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Objectives: This study tests the generality of Tyler’s process-based model of policing by examining whether the effect of procedural justice and competing variables (i.e., distributive justice and police effectiveness) on police legitimacy evaluations operate in the same manner across individual and situational differences. Methods: Data from a random sample of mail survey respondents are used to test the ‘‘invariance thesis’’ (N = 1681). Multiplicative interaction effects between the key antecedents of legitimacy (measured separately for obligation to obey and trust in the police) and various demographic categories, prior experiences, and perceived neighborhood conditions are estimated in a series of multivariate regression equations. Results: The effect of procedural justice on police legitimacy is largely invariant. However, regression and marginal results show that procedural justice has a larger effect on trust in law enforcement among people with prior victimization experience compared to their counterparts. Additionally, the distributive justice effect on trust in the police is more pronounced for people who have greater fear of crime and perceive higher levels of disorder in their neighborhood. Conclusion: The results suggest that Tyler’s process-based model is a ‘‘general’’ theory of individual police legitimacy evaluations. The police can enhance their legitimacy by ensuring procedural fairness during citizen interactions. The role of procedural justice also appears to be particularly important when the police interact with crime victims.
Public Satisfaction With Police: Using Procedural Justice to Improve Police Legitimacy
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 2007
Policing research and theory emphasises the importance of supportive relationships between police and the communities they serve in increasing police effectiveness in reducing crime and disorder. A key reason people support police is that they view police as legitimate. The existing research literature, primarily from the United States, indicates that the most important factor in public assessments of police legitimacy is procedural justice. The present study is the first in an Australian jurisdiction to examine the effect of procedural justice and police legitimacy on public satisfaction with police. Using responses to a large postal survey (n = 2611), findings show that people who believe police use procedural justice when they exercise their authority are more likely to view police as legitimate, and in turn are more satisfied with police services. This study differs to US-based research in the greater importance of people's evaluations of instrumental factors in judgments of...
Shaping Citizen Perceptions of Police Legitimacy: A Randomized Field Trial of Procedural Justice
Criminology, 2013
Exploring the relationship between procedural justice and citizen perceptions of police is a well-trodden pathway. Studies show that when citizens perceive the police acting in a procedurally just manner-by treating people with dignity and respect, and by being fair and neutral in their actions-they view the police as legitimate and are more likely to comply with directives and cooperate with police. Our article examines both the direct and the indirect outcomes of procedural justice policing, tested under randomized field trial conditions. We assess whether police Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ crim.2013.51.issue-1/issuetoc. * The research reported in this article was funded, in its entirety, by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS). The authors thank the team of researchers from the University of Queensland (Institute for Social Science Research) and Griffith University who participated in a variety of ways to bring this trial to fruition. The partnership between the research team
The drivers of police legitimacy: some European research
Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 2013
This article summarises some of the thinking and empirical findings behind a programme of survey work on procedural justice theory in Europe. The paper locates procedural justice theory in a framework of compliance theories and sketches out the main features of it, defining the central concept of legitimacy. It then presents findings from the fifth European Social Survey, drawing on a ‘trust in justice’ module which was designed by the authors and colleagues. This provides good support for the procedural justice hypotheses that we set out to test – that different types of public trust in the police (trust that they are effective, procedurally fair and distributively fair) are related to public perceptions of police legitimacy, which in turn are related to self-reported compliance with the law and preparedness to cooperate with the police.
Policing, procedural fairness and public behaviour: a review and critique
International Journal of Police Science & …, 2009
This paper provides a brief review and critique of the procedural fairness conception of police legitimacy. It is argued that the theoretical framework is too limited to constitute the basis for any overall legitimacy-based model of policing. Rather, its potential stands to be greatly enhanced if it incorporates other crucial variables such as the role of police self-legitimating activities in shaping police treatment of the public, and the contexts in which procedural fairness and outcome issues are singularly or collectively influential. It is also argued that, while it is well and good if procedural fairness enhances the quality of public compliance and cooperation with the police, it is unhealthy if procedural fairness is taken seriously only for its utilitarian value. Procedural fairness, and by extension police legitimacy, must be pursued as something of intrinsic value, a good in and of itself; treating people fairly should not be an issue of choice contingent simply on demonstrable evidence of the facilitation of the task of the police in maintaining order.
Just Authority? Public trust and police legitimacy
1. Social and moral connections 2. Design of the study FOREWORD This well written and engaging volume articulates and empirically supports a new and innovative approach to policing based upon the goal of creating and maintaining the belief among members of the public that police authority is legitimate. In so doing the authors are providing a new framework for thinking about the goals of policing, one that emphasizes how police policies and practices are experienced within policed communities. Rather than concentrating authority over policing decisions within higher level policing authorities, and rather than evaluating police effectiveness in terms of success in combating particular forms of crime defined by police professionals, this approach suggests that the community needs to play a strong role in defining its problems and in determining how the police should address those problems.
”Truly Free Consent”? Clarifying the Nature of Police Legitimacy using Causal Mediation Analysis
Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2020
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.