The Relationship Between Citizen Oversight and Procedural Justice Measures in Policing: An Exploratory Study (original) (raw)
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Advances in Social Sciences and Management, 2024
This research paper examines how a procedural justice policing approach affects how people perceive their duty to follow police orders. It investigates whether the degree of confidence that a citizen has in law enforcement during a police-citizen encounter may have an impact on how procedural justice functions in relation to their duty to uphold the law. The effectiveness of procedural justice in enticing citizens to uphold the law is examined, as well as the possibility that citizens' trust in the authorities may play a role in this. Numerous studies have examined how procedural justice affects people's attitudes toward and cooperation with the police and other elements of the criminal justice system, but many of these investigations did not break down procedural justice into its different strands, such as police procedural justice. The public's perception of the police will increase if they execute their authority in a procedurally fair manner, according to Tyler's process-based model of policing. In the past, process-based study has largely ignored public trust in the police in favor of focusing on the sources of legitimacy. Tyler's process-based policing model argues that the police can improve the public's view of their legitimacy and dependability by exercising their power in a procedurally fair manner. Up until now, process-based research has mostly disregarded the legitimacy of the police and focused on the sources of legitimacy.
The Police-Community Partnership: Civilian Oversight as an Evaluation Tool for Community Policing
The Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Race and Social Justice , 2016
Citizen review boards (CRBs) tend to act as unofficial criminal courts for police misconduct. Without the binding, legal powers of a court, these civilian oversight bodies are often ineffective and draw resistance from law enforcement. “Community policing,” or community-oriented policing (COP) is a law enforcement strategy that emphasizes the use of problem-solving skills through community engagement and partnerships, but remains limited so long as it evaluates “community‑friendly” officer performance through arrest/citation statistics only. Without a process to evaluate public relations skills, the COP strategy encourages officers to reduce distance between them and the community while retaining a crime-fighting focus—a dynamic that increases tension and violence between police and crime‑prone neighborhoods. If civilian oversight organizations were to review both positive and negative instances of police conduct, and law enforcement were to use this input to evaluate individual officers, then the review board would be able to promote community‑friendly officers over problematic ones, thereby deterring police misconduct. This proposal presents an optimal use of civilian oversight and a partnership that would improve the effectiveness of both the CRB, and the COP strategy currently utilized by the police.
Citizen trust of the police in the United States: How bad is it, and what can we do to fix it
2019
Trust in the legitimacy of law enforcement is necessary for effective policing. Literature focuses in on three broad areas in its discussion of trust in the police; general feelings of social trust toward one’s community, belief in absence or presence of procedural justice, and perceptions of police effectiveness in the neighborhood in terms of disorder and incivilities. In this paper, I use data from the World Values Survey collected in 2011 in the United States to examine these correlates of trust in the police by way of logistic regression models. I find that, in accordance with recent scholarship, individuals’ perceptions of procedural justice have the greatest impact on one’s trust in the police. These findings should impart legislators to give substantial weight to potential policies such as the “Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2018” if the US wishes to improve its policing
Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 2007
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine data from a survey of police officers in a Western US city, showing the factors that shape police officers' satisfaction with their city's system for investigating and resolving citizen complaints alleging officer misconduct. Specifically, it tests whether perceptions of legitimate authority and procedural justice influence overall satisfaction, and how these two theoretical perspectives fare relative to a distributive justice perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses anonymous mailed surveys to examine the attitudes of a sample of 373 police officer respondents from one large urban police department.FindingsThe findings support the importance of both procedural justice and perceived legitimacy by finding that both perspectives shape officers' satisfaction more than the actual outcomes reached on their cases. Attitudes toward oversight were not found to be related to satisfaction with the complaint process.Resea...
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...
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.
Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy
In the U.S., the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the public would better trust the police and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, authors Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seemingly offers a relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform actually proves illusory.
CITIZEN SATISFACTION WITH POLICE AND COMMUNITY POLICING
This article attempts to shed light on citizen satisfaction with police in a community policing environment. It specifically aims to analyze the influence of quality of police contact, police work ratings in terms of collaboration with local community, neighborhood ratings, victimization, and feeling of safety in the neighborhood. The study found that the most important predictor of citizen satisfaction with the police was police work ratings. Feeling of safety was a moderate level predictor of citizen satisfaction. The analysis confirmed our hypothesis that those who feel unsafe or victimized previously maintain a less satisfaction toward the police. The results of this study have implications for community policing activities intended to increase citizen satisfaction with police. As shown in this study, police rating in terms of collaboration with public has a strong positive effect on increasing satisfaction with police which confirms the utility of main philosophy of community policing. In this respect, gaining public support and involvement is critical for successful police services