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

Abstract

This study steps outside the dominant supervisor-centric approach to organizational justice to examine the impact of peer officers on both procedural justice and injustice in officer–citizen interactions. Recent scandals over the failure of officers to not intercede or object to a colleague’s misconduct has led to a growing policy and research interest in peer influence, training, and intervention programs. A structural equation modeling analysis on a cross-national survey of officers decomposed the direct and indirect effects of peer procedural justice (PPJ) on anticipated officer just and unjust interactions with the public. The study’s finding that PPJ has a greater impact than supervisory procedural justice on officer anticipated just and unjust behavior suggests that policing studies should expand the modeling of organizational justice to include the role of interactions with peer officers. The outcome also adds to the nascent research seeking to better understand how peer-level interventions can promote procedurally just policing.