Procedural Justice and Order Maintenance Policing: A Study of Inner‐City Young Men’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

Abstract

There is tension between the core tenets of procedural justice and those of order maintenance policing. Research has shown that citizens' perceptions of procedural justice influence their beliefs about police legitimacy, yet at the same time, some order maintenance policing efforts stress frequent stops of vehicles and persons for suspected disorderly behavior. These types of programs can threaten citizens' perceptions of police legitimacy because the targeted offenses are minor and are often not well-defined. Citizens stopped for lowlevel offenses may view such stops as a form of harassment, as they may not believe they were doing anything to warrant police scrutiny. This paper examines young men's self-described experiences with this style of proactive policing. Study findings highlight that order maintenance policing strategies have negative implications for police legitimacy and crime control efforts via their potential to damage citizens' views of procedural justice.

Street Stops and Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments in Young Urban Men’s Legal Socialization

“…Accordingly the third question involves an analysis of the role of psychological judgments about the justice or injustice of police actions during stops in shaping reactions to the police. A large literature links people's reactions to personal experiences with the police and general judgments about police behavior to evaluations of the procedural justice of police actions (Belvedere, Worrall & Tibbetts, 2005;Bradford, Jackson & Stanko, 2009;Gau, Brunson, 2009;Hinds, 2009;Tyler & Huo, 2002). This literature leads to the hypothesis that it is not stops per se that undermine legitimacy, but the behavior of the police during those stops (Tyler & Wakslak, 2004).…”

Organisational justice’s relationship with job satisfaction and organisational commitment among Indian police

“…In fact, studies have shown that people focus on the fairness of the manner in which police exercise their authority (i.e. on procedural justice) in their judgment of legitimacy, more so than evaluations of the favourability or fairness of outcomes (Engel, 2005;Gau and Brunson, 2009;Reisig and Chandek, 2001). Perceptions of police legitimacy lead to citizen compliance and allow the police flexibility in their crime control efforts.…”

Proactive policing and equal treatment of ethnic-minority youths

“…In the literature, police discretion is generally regarded as a factor which facilitates and increases racial and ethnic discrimination (Mastrofski 2004, Talley et al 2005, Ridgeway 2006, Bowling and Phillips 2007, Walsh and Taylor 2007, Gau and Brunson 2010, Van der Leun and Van der Woude 2011. Reading this literature, it seems almost self-evident that when more objective, formal grounds for police intervention are replaced by more subjective judgements by police officers, this will increase the likelihood of discrimination of ethnic minorities.…”