Fair treatment in policing: testing the relationship between internal and external procedural justice

External Procedural Justice: Do Just Supervisors Shape Officer Trust and Willingness to Take the Initiative With the Public?

“…This finding is in line with previous studies in China, Taiwan, and the United States where researchers found the indirect mechanisms were either the sole or dominant path between IPJ and EPJ (Sun et al, 2018;Trinkner et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2019). Although there are studies that have found a substantial direct effect of fair supervision on fair policing (C. M. Donner & Olson, 2019;Myhill & Bradford, 2013;Tankebe, 2014;Van Craen & Skogan, 2017), in Croatia, the indirect links seem more important. In parallel with recent tests of the work relations model demonstrating the role of mediating factors in the IPJ-EPJ relationship (such as moral alignment, job satisfaction, and anger), the Zagreb study supported the role of indirect paths for supervisory justice to impact officer behavior on the street.…”

“…Though direct tests of police views on the public are relatively rare, complementary research demonstrates that a procedurally fair organizational climate protects officers against developing cynical and distrusting attitudes toward citizens (Trinkner et al, 2016), and such negative attitudes have been found to decrease officers' inclination to treat citizens in a procedurally fair manner (C. M. Donner & Olson, 2019). With regard to the specific dimension of respect, Porter and Alpert (2017) showed that police recruits who exhibit more cynical attitudes toward the public are more likely to endorse reacting disrespectfully to the public.…”

“…Applying the work relations framework on police in a transitioning European country provides an alternative social setting from past tests of the model conducted in North America, South America, and East Asia (C. M. Donner & Olson, 2019;Haas et al, 2015;Sun et al, 2019;Van Craen & Skogan, 2017;Wu et al, 2017). The Croatian Chief of Police oversees 20 police administrations and 200 police stations and about 20,000 officers for a country of just over 4 million.…”

“…As part of this effort, Van Craen (2016b) proposed a work relations framework for police agencies that starts with officer perceptions of the internal procedural justice (IPJ) employed by their supervisors that affect the officer's behavior on the street including the officer's external procedural justice (EPJ). A nascent wave of studies has supported either a direct or indirect IPJ and EPJ relationship in Van Craen's conceptual model (C. M. Donner & Olson, 2019;Kutnjak Ivkovic ´et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2018;Sun et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2020;Van Craen & Skogan, 2017;Wu et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2019). The work relations framework has served as a platform for testing a number of mechanisms linking supervisory and officer procedural fairness, such as the role of officer trust in the public, positive and negative emotions, job satisfaction, commitment to community policing, and moral alignment with the public.…”

The Distinct Role of Peers and Supervisors in Shaping Officers’ Just and Unjust Interactions with Citizens

“…Over the last decade, researchers have demonstrated the role of fair supervisors as a predictor of different police outcome variables, including increased job satisfaction, greater trust in the public, lowered job turnover, enhanced officer self-legitimacy, improved public service attitudes, and greater compliance with agency rules (e.g., Donner & Olson, 2020; Haas et al, 2015; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe, 2010; Wolfe & Nix, 2016; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). Among these scholars, Van Craen (2016a; 2016b) developed a (work relations) framework to examine the diverse direct and indirect effects of fair supervisors on police outcomes.…”