Police Legitimacy in Action: Lessons for Theory and Practice (original) (raw)
Related papers
Legitimating Practices: Revisiting the Predicates of Police Legitimacy
British Journal of Criminology
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.
The Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice, , 2021
In this encyclopedia entry, we consider the empirical (or popular) legitimacy of the police. Taking the perspective of those subject to (and beneficiaries of) police power, we first discuss the conceptual definition of legitimacy as a component of the relationship between police and public. On what basis can it be claimed that people believe that the police have the right to power and the authority to govern? Second, we briefly outline why legitimacy is so important in this relationship, especially in relation to the ways in which it can motivate behavior. Third, we consider issues of measurement. If police legitimacy is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder, how can we assess its quality and quantity? We call for greater standardization in the way legitimacy is measured before bringing the discussion back to the question of what ‘normative concerns’ means when we are thinking about legitimacy. Our comments relate primarily to policing in liberal democracies, although much of what is said will likely apply to police in other contexts as well.
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.
Legitimacy and the Social Field of Policing
Public actions that summon and assist police officers are vital for the effective and equitable functioning of the criminal justice system. Such acts of cooperation link informal and formal mechanisms of social control. They also reflect the legitimacy of the police. This paper reports the findings of a probability sample survey investigating public trust, institutional legitimacy and cooperation with the police in London, England. We find that the readiness of individuals to cooperate with the police is associated with their trust in police procedural fairness and the legitimacy they invest in the police. This replicates prior US-based research in the UK for the first time, but we also highlight some predictors of public cooperation that have hitherto gone unexamined. Linking police legitimacy and cooperation to perceived collective efficacy (confidence that local residents will intervene on behalf of the collective good), concerns about disorder, and authoritarian positions on the perceived loss of discipline in society, we use Bourdieu’s notions of field and habitus to highlight the role that the social position of the police plays in generating public cooperation. Police legitimacy is shaped by its location in the social ‘field’ of policing and the web of relationships that link organization and citizen.