LEGITIMACY, PROCEDURAL JUSTICE and POLICE-CITIZEN ENCOUNTERS: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Impact of Procedural Justice on Citizen Perceptions of the Police during Traffic Stops in Turkey (original) (raw)
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Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2016
Objectives The process-based model of police legitimacy suggests, when police are perceived to make fair decisions and treat people with respect, they will be viewed as legitimate authorities. A randomized controlled trial was used to test the impact of a procedural justice policing intervention, relative to routine police behavior, during traffic stops for excessive speeding in Adana, Turkey. Methods Drivers stopped by traffic officers for speeding violations were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Subjects in the treatment group received the procedural justice policing intervention during traffic stops, while subjects in the control group experienced business-as-usual traffic stops. Treatment officer behavior was guided by a script that helped to ensure that key components of a procedurally-just encounter were delivered. After completion of the traffic stop, drivers were interviewed on the encounter and general perceptions of traffic police. Results The experimental analyses show that the infusion of procedural justice principles into police traffic stops does improve citizens' perceptions of the specific encounter relative to routine police traffic stops. However, the procedural justice treatment did not generate a robust improvement in citizens' general perceptions of traffic officers. Conclusion These results indicate it might be overly optimistic to suggest a single positive encounter can exert a strong influence on durable citizen perceptions of confidence and trust in the police. In addition to ensuring procedurally-just encounters, police executives and police makers should also pay attention to other relevant performance dimensions such as crime control effectiveness, distributive fairness, and lawfulness to change global perceptions of the police.
Citizens’ opinions of police procedures
Purpose – Citizens’ opinions of police work were investigated with an aim to monitor and evaluate the quality of police procedures conducted in traffic stop encounters and traffic accidents. Methodology/Approach – The characteristics of traffic stop encounters were analyzed with data obtained with structured questionnaires gathered from 319 citizens who were stopped for exceeding the speed limit. In the second study, police procedures in traffic accidents were analyzed with data obtained from 285 participants. The methods of descriptive statistics and nonparametric test Chi square were used. Findings – The results showed that police procedures were performed well but not perfectly. In traffic stop encounters, citizens think that officers were polite, fair and understandable, but that they failed to help drivers return to the flow of traffic and also did not inform people of their rights. In the case of traffic accidents, citizens were satisfied with the officers’ tidiness and willingness to help. Several faults were found: citizens’ satisfaction was lower with the officers’ response time, officers frequently fail to inform drivers of their rights and female respondents believed their opinions were not given enough consideration. Research limitations/implications – The interpretation of the results is limited by a sample anomaly (the poor response of males). Practical implications – The results show what needs to be changed or improved in future training of police officers. Originality/value of the paper – the paper should be interpreted as a monitoring instrument that gives insight into feasible quality changes of police work, which should help to improve citizens’ opinions about the police.
Comparing Police and Public Perceptions of a Routine Traffic Encounter
Police Quarterly, 2015
Police perceptions of procedural justice are less well understood than citizen perceptions. Our paper compares the views of police officers and citizens of a routine Australian policing encounter, the Random Breath Test. We examine perceptions of two versions of their encounter: a business as usual and a more explicitly procedurally just interaction. Our results indicate that the procedurally just version affected the views of police officers, but not drivers, regarding the reasons for conducting Random Breath Tests. It also appears that police officers believe that the encounter has a greater impact on drivers’ views than the drivers report themselves. This study has important implications for policing as it demonstrates that incorporating procedural justice within police-citizen interactions affects police officers as well as the citizens. It also highlights the importance of using external (e.g., larger community) measures, in addition to internal measures (e.g., within police or...
Justice Quarterly, 2018
Police legitimacy is generally regarded as a view among community members that police departments play an appropriate role in implementing rules governing public conduct. Placing body worn cameras (BWCs) on police officers has been suggested as a potentially important response to police legitimacy crises. We use a rigorous controlled quasi-experimental evaluation to test the impact of BWCs on citizen perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy during traffic stops in Turkey. Relative to stops by officers without BWCs, we find that motorists stopped by officers with BWCs reported improved perceptions of procedural justice in the encounter and perceptions of legitimacy of traffic officers and the police more generally. Supplementary analyses suggest that the perceived improvements in police legitimacy were entirely driven by perceived enhancements in procedural justice during the traffic stop encounter. These findings suggest that body camera technology help ensure procedurally just encounters and improve public perceptions of police legitimacy.
Procedural Justice and Road Policing: Is it important?
Road policing is an important component of programs designed to alter road user behaviour with the use of theory to underpin such programs becoming more prevalent. One theory that may be useful to examine in a road policing context is procedural justice. The concept of procedural justice suggests that how the police treat people when they interact with them is very important. Procedural justice has four elements: neutrality, respect, trust and voice. In interactions where the elements of procedural justice are present, individuals are more likely to comply with the directions of, and to cooperate with, the police. They are also more likely to see the police institution as legitimate. The concept of procedural justice has been applied and explored in a broad range of policing contexts but in a limited way within road policing. This paper considers the concept of procedural justice, explores what we know about its application to road policing and discusses some of the implications for...
The effects of procedural injustice during police–citizen encounters: a factorial vignette study
Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2017
Objectives This study tested the effect of procedural injustice relative to being sanctioned by police on a variety of outcome measures, such as decision acceptance and immediate compliance, in two types of police-citizen encounters, traffic stops and noise complaints. Methods A factorial vignette design was used to determine the effect that the manipulations (i.e., procedural injustice and receiving a citation) had on the dependent variables. Participants (N = 594) were randomly assigned one vignette scenario with four possible conditions. After reading the hypothetical encounter, closed-ended survey items were administered to participants. Results The standardized regression coefficients from the ordinal regression models revealed that participants who were administered the procedural injustice stimuli are less satisfied with how the police resolved the encounter, reported that they are less likely to follow the police directives, said they are less willing to accept the officer's decisions, and are more likely to wish the police had handled the situation differently. This pattern of findings was consistent in both types of police encounters. Importantly, support was also found for the hypothesis that procedural injustice is more salient in predicting outcomes than whether a citation is issued. Conclusions The results support the process-based model of regulation and serve to underscore the influence of unfair police processes on encounter-specific outcome variables.
The influence of roadway police justice on driver emotion
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 2018
Perceived justice occurs when good behaviour leads to a positive outcome, and when bad behaviour leads to a negative outcome. Punishment for offending motorists is a negative outcome resulting from a collision or police enforcement. Punishment of traffic law/norm violators may reduce recidivism and drivers who observe the punishment may be less likely to perform similar infractions. Punishment may also influence the emotions of witnesses and victimised drivers. This study examined the effect of various punishments on witnesses' feelings of anger and happiness on roadways. 142 individuals were randomly assigned to one of five punishment conditions (i.e., police enforcement; collision with roadside object; collision with other vehicle; collision with roadside object and police enforcement; collision with other vehicle and police enforcement). Participants viewed four animated videos depicting unjust driving behaviours and were told that the violator in each scenario experienced one of the five forms of punishment. Participants indicated how angry and happy the each scenario made them, before and after learning of the punishment. Analyses indicated that perceived punishment by police reduced feelings of anger and increased feelings of happiness compared to the other four forms of punishment. In addition to increasing roadway safety, the current study demonstrated the importance of enforcement's positive impact on the emotional states of witnesses of unjust driving behaviour.
Assessing Police Performance in Citizen Encounters: Police Legitimacy and Management Accountability
When people have contacts with the police, the fairness with which police are perceived to act affects citizens’ trust and confidence in the police and their sense that the police deserve to be obeyed – that is, the procedural justice that citizens subjectively experience affects the legitimacy of the police. Translating this body of research into police practice is not straightforward, however. The procedural justice with which officers act is typically not measured in police agencies, nor is it an outcome for which police managers are held accountable. Conducting research in the Schenectady and Syracuse Police Departments, we addressed these questions: • Does performance on these outcomes – procedural justice and citizen satisfaction – improve when information on these outcomes is incorporated into departments’ systems of performance measurement and accountability? • What do police managers do with this information, and how (if at all) are field supervisors and patrol officers affected by it? • Are survey-based measures of citizens’ subjective experiences valid measures of police performance, that is, do they reflect the procedural justice with which police act? The findings from Schenectady rest on a broader foundation of data, so we begin with them and then consider the respects in which those findings are corroborated by the those from Syracuse. In Schenectady, we observed in officers’ behavior moderate levels of procedural justice and low levels of procedural injustice. Officers’ patterns of procedural justice and procedural injustice are shaped in important ways by elements of the situations in which officers become involved and the behavior of citizens with whom officers interact. Procedural justice was greater in incidents that involved violent crime or interpersonal conflict, greater when the citizen was Black, lower when the citizen was a suspect or third party rather than a victim or complainant, and lower when the citizen resisted the officer’s authority. Procedural injustice was greater when the citizen was male, a suspect, intoxicated, resisted police authority, or disrespected police; injustice was lower when the citizen was Black. However, citizens’ subjective experiences are rather weakly related to the forms of officers’ overt behavior that comprise procedural justice. Officers’ procedural justice and injustice together explained about 10 percent of the variation in citizens’ subjective experience in Schenectady. Procedural injustice had the greater effect on subjective experience, by far, such that we found asymmetry in the effects of justice and injustice that parallel previous findings based only on survey data. However, the Schenectady data suggest that this asymmetry stems not from the relatively strong effects of negative experiences but rather from citizens’ tendency to overestimate the procedural justice with which police act in their encounters. Citizens tend to be fairly positive in their ratings of police performance, even when the procedural justice that we observed was fairly low, a pattern that may reflect the impact of citizens’ more general attitudes toward the police on their perceptions of police actions in individual encounters with police. Citizens’ judgments about procedural justice are also affected by whether (if not so much how) officers exercise forms of police authority: conducting searches or using physical force. Searches of citizens have strong effects on their assessments of procedural justice, unless citizens accede to them, while the use of physical force has a notable effect as well. We did not make a distinction between legal and illegal searches, nor did we make a distinction between reasonable and unreasonable force, but extant evidence suggests that citizens’ judgments about the propriety of police action turns on their perceptions of procedural justice and not on the legality of officers’ behavior, per se. Neither indicator of police performance – a survey-based indicator or an observation-based indicator – revealed consistent changes that ensued from the survey-based measurement of performance. Overall, the month-to-month changes in measures of citizens’ subjective experience were by and large within a range of sampling fluctuation, and with no change that could be attributed to the introduction of performance measures to monthly Compstat meetings. Given the weak connections between what officers do (and do not do) and what citizens later think about it, we might well see little or no change in survey-based measures of performance with good faith – even herculean – efforts by platoon commanders to manage their officers’ behavior in police-citizen encounters. But neither did we see consistent changes in the observation-based measures of officers’ procedural justice. Platoon commanders and first-line supervisors approached the management of this police outcome in different ways, which we characterized as forming a continuum. Some gave regular attention during line-ups to the quality of police-citizen interaction, and in that context shared survey results that had been delivered at the monthly Compstat meeting. They explained both what procedural justice means and why it is important. On one platoon, this appeared to affect officers’ performance. On others, however, commanders and supervisors either attended to the issue only intermittently, alluding to what it means for officers’ conduct but not its rationale, or were skeptical or even dismissive of the importance of “customer service.” This continuum reflects a process of “sensemaking” on the parts of Schenectady’s lieutenants and sergeants – that is, the interpretation of what customer service or procedural justice represents and the appropriate emphasis to be placed on the quality of police-citizen interactions in the context of the demands of street-level police work. Based on their interpretations, some were receptive to the administration’s emphasis on “customer service,” finding it quite appropriate, while others were more guarded in their willingness to embrace the ideas, or flatly opposed to it. This same process of sensemaking played out among patrol officers. In Syracuse we found patterns very similar to those in Schenectady on every score that we were able to measure. Citizens’ subjective experiences were of a generally comparable nature, and they tended to bear the same relationships to other factors, including legitimacy, even though legitimacy was somewhat higher in Syracuse than Schenectady. We also found similar patterns of variation in the management of procedural justice, and similarly mixed receptivity to a customer service emphasis among patrol officers and supervisors.
Citizen Satisfaction with Police Encounters
Police Quarterly, 2005
This article examines the character and consequences of encounters between police and residents of the city of Chicago. It describes the frequency with which they contacted the police for assistance or support and how often they were stopped by them. Follow-up questions gathered information about the character of those contacts. The analysis contrasts the effects of experiential, on-scene factors with those of race, age, gender, and language on satisfaction with encounters. It demonstrates the great importance of the quality of routine police-citizen encounters, for things that officers did on the spot dominated in determining satisfaction. The personal characteristics of city residents played an important role in shaping who was treated in this way or that and affected satisfaction primarily through on-scene actions by police. age race language police effort communication satisfaction assistance FIGURE 6: Effects of Race, Age, and Language on Satisfaction With Police Service
Asymmetry in the Impact of Encounters with Police
Policing & Society, 2006
This article examines the impact of personal experience on popular assessments of the quality of police service. Following past research, it addresses the influences of personal and neighbourhood factors on confidence in the police. It then focuses on the additional impact of positive and negative personal experiences with the police. Several studies of police encounters with the public have noted that the relationship between how people recall being treated and their general confidence in the police may be asymmetrical. At its worst, the police may get essentially no credit for delivering professional service, while bad experiences can deeply influence peoples' views of their performance and even legitimacy. This proposition is tested using survey data on police-initiated and citizeninitiated contacts with police in Chicago. The findings indicate that the impact of having a bad experience is four to fourteen times as great as that of having a positive experience, and the coefficients associated with having a good experience*/including being treated fairly and politely, and receiving service that was prompt and helpful*/were not statistically different from zero. Another section of the article replicates this finding using surveys of residents of seven other urban areas located in three different countries. The article concludes that this is bad news indeed for police administrators intent on solidifying their support among voters, taxpayers and the consumers of police services.