Transcript Enhancing Police legitimacy

Procedural Justice and Legitimacy
SPIAA 2014, Tampa, Florida
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Roadmap
 Public’s role in policing
 Gaining compliance
 Legitimacy
 What is and what it may get you
 Procedural justice
 Elements
 Research on procedural justice
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The public and the police
 The focus is on how the public impacts on the
effectiveness of the police in their efforts to combat
crime and maintain social order.
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Public’s Role in Policing
 Mobilization
 Information
 Prevention
 Compliance A-Obey the law generally and
 B-Obey police during a police – citizen encounter.
 Most of these above are largely voluntary in nature.
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2 ways to gain Compliance
 Threat based
 “I comply because the police are good at job/effective
and will catch me if I do not”


not most effective
have to be every where all the time.
 Voluntary compliance.
 “I comply not due to fear but because I feel I ought to do
so”

Can concentrate resources on problem areas/people.
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Can support/compliance be
created?
 The value of voluntary cooperation and support from
the public raises the question of how such cooperation
and support can be created and maintained.
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French and Raven (1959)
 Coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent
 Legitimate power
 is the person’s perceptions whether a superior has the
right to prescribe and control their behavior.
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Police Legitimacy
 The ability to create and maintain a climate of public
opinion in which community residents generally view
the police as legitimate authorities.
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Sources of legitimacy
 Instrumental and Normative sources of legitimacy
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Instrumental source of legitimacy
 Instrumental perspective of legitimacy suggests that
police develop and maintain legitimacy through their
effectiveness in controlling crime and disorder in the
community.
 At the individual level- compliance via creation of a
credible risk that people will be caught and punished for
wrongdoing
 At the community level- public cooperation in fighting
crime is motivated by evidence that the police are
performing effectively in their efforts to control crime
and urban disorder
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Normative source of legitimacy
 Normative-the legitimacy of police is linked to public
judgments about the fairness of the processes through
which the police make decisions and exercise
authority.
 At the community level the police are viewed as fair.
 At the individual level- I was treated fairly in my
interaction.
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The value of police legitimacy?
 When people feel that an authority is legitimate, they
authorize that authority to determine what their
behavior will be within a given set of situations.
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How do the police shape public
views of their legitimacy?
 One idea is that legitimacy of authorities and
institutions is rooted in public views about the
appropriateness of the manner in which the police
exercise their authority.
 Evaluation based on use of fair procedures when
engaging in police activities.


These are distinct from judgments based upon effectiveness
/outcomes.
HOW THEY ARE TREATED
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A legitimacy-based strategy of
policing
 A legitimacy-based strategy of policing increases
cooperation with the law by drawing on people’s
feelings of responsibility and obligation.
 Building legitimacy is the goal.
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Cost effective
 If this works it is cheaper and more efficient than
maintaining a credible system of deterrence or police
performance upon crime.
 Could also be the next area to be mined once
instrumental models of crime control have been put in
place.
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Its about the process!
 In dealing with authority people value just, decent
treatment, transparency, and fair decision making over
instrumental concerns and outcomes.
 Fair treatment promotes feelings of procedural justice
and promotes motive based trust.
 These in turn increase the legitimacy of the authority
concerned.
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The Legitimacy gets you
 Decision acceptance.
 Readiness to comply with instructions/orders.
 Compliance with the law.
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Theory of procedural justice
 If PJ works, it suggests that cooperation and
compliance will be secured by PROCESS based styles
of policing which will encourage the public to see
cooperating with the police and obeying the law as the
right things to do.
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Decision
acceptance
Procedural
fairness
Legitimacy
Cooperation
Compliance
with law
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Many factors
 Clearly there are many factors involved in compliance
with the law/police other than legitimacy of authority.
 Risk of detection
 Personal morality
 Psychological factors
 Not saying these do not matter or impact but only
saying that perhaps legitimacy does too.
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Compliance model
Police
Effectiveness
Perceived
risk of
sanction
LEGITIMACY
Compliance
with law
Procedural
Justice
Personal
Morality
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What is procedural justice?
 Coined by Thibaut and Walker (1975) to refer to
people's perceptions of the treatment they receive
during the processes involved in decision-making.
 The subjective experience of
the process.
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What is procedural justice?
 Participation.
 Explain their situation and views

Feel input solicited and considered.
 “Shut your …”
 Neutrality.
 Unbiased and based on objective things not personal views.
 Treated with dignity and respect by legal authorities.
 Treated with politeness, took them seriously.


Social status and self worth
“Hey Buddy…”
 Trust the motives of decision maker.
 Sincere and benevolent concern
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Legit? Phili Stop 9/27/13
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4exZ-jXgWE
 Participation.
 Neutrality.
 Treated with dignity and respect by legal authorities.
 Trust the motives of decision maker.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njb6X-nmW2M
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Sheriff Susan Rahr
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQyNtyA34Bo
 Sheriff Susan E. Rahr, King County (WA) Sheriff's
Office
 http://www.nij.gov/multimedia/presenter/presentertyler/data/resources/presenter-tyler-transcript.htm
 An NIJ Research for the Real World Seminar
Tom Tyler, Ph.D.
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L.E.E.D
 Specific things to do not do -“Don’t be a jerk”
 Listen
 Explain

Shows you listened-creates the next
 Equity
 Dignity
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Lack of procedural justice
 ‘If the police can behave however they please, and
ignore the rules, so can I.’
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Sunshine and Tyler 2003
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Two major questions
 Does legitimacy influence public support of the
police?
 What determines legitimacy?
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Findings-Police legitimacy
 Public evaluations of police legitimacy impact people’s
 compliance with law,
 their willingness to cooperate with and assist the police,
 and whether the public will empower the police.

Legitimacy was the dominant predictor of orientation toward
the police.
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Findings-what determines
legitimacy
 Procedural justice --the primary antecedent of
legitimacy.
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Not simply instrumental
effectiveness
 People appear not to just judge police on instrumental
terms.
 This suggests not just focusing on instrumental
effectiveness but also on the value of focusing on an
understanding of the determinants of legitimacy.
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ETHNIC GROUP DIFFERENCES
 Regardless of ethnicity, people cooperate with the
police when they view the police as legitimate
 Looks to be important to members of three major ethnic
groups

Whites, African Americans, Hispanics.
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Tyler and Wakslak (2004)
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Subjective experience of being
Profiled
 Not the objective experience-perception.
 What impacts the attributions people make?
 Experience fairness and or
 Generally fair police dealings with the community

Are they are less likely to infer profiling occurs?
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General findings
 Procedural fairness significantly affected the
inferences people made about their interactions with
the police.
 Quality of decision making
 Quality of treatment
 Inferences about trustworthiness.
 People less likely to infer they were profiled when they
are treated with politeness and respect
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The process matters
 The actions of individual police can, therefore, have a
direct and fundamental impact by either enhancing or
lowering people's judgments of police legitimacy
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Mazerolle, Antrobus, Bennett and
Tyler (2013)
 Goal:
 To test the influence of an experimental manipulation
on both specific and generalized views of police
legitimacy and how these views influence people’s
satisfaction and willingness to cooperate with police.
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Police Citizen encounters
 Global attitudes toward police formed often before
contact
 Vicarous experience perspective
 Learn from stories of friends, family and media
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Method idea
 Compare and contrast two distinct types of police
citizen encounters and how they differentially
influence citizen’s perceptions of police during the
encounter as well as their more general orientation to
police.
 Randomized field trial
 Traffic stops
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Assumptions
 Variations in respondent’s preexisting views of the
police will be distributed equally among the
experimental and control group.
 Experimental condition (PJ) will shape not only citizen
views about the police during the encounter but also
their general views of the police.
 These specific and general view of police will shape
views of police legitimacy.
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Methodology?
 Random allocation of 60 planed road blocks (RBT) to
standard (control) or experimental (script
operationalizing procedural justice).
 300-400 cars per operation
 Sealed survey for those pulled over.
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Control
 Random pull over
 BAC used
 20 seconds
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Experimental
 Incorporate PJ elements
 Participation, dignity and respect, neutrality,
trustworthy motives into a script
 Still had to take the BAC but could voice concerns
 Thank them for time.
 10 officers were standard or experimental per RBT
operation
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Findings
 Key finding of the analysis shows that perceptions of
procedural justice in the specific context not only
influence specific attitudes about police, but also more
general beliefs about the police:
 Citizens who perceived the RBT traffic encounter to be
procedurally just had more positive specific as well as
generalized views of police.

It shows that specific views of police, derived from a very short
encounter with police, can shape generalized views of police.
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Findings
 Overall, the findings show that the more “procedurally
just” the police strive to make even a short encounter,
the more likely citizens are to perceive the police as
legitimate.
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Findings
 Satisfaction was directly related to perceptions of
procedural justice, whereas cooperation was only
indirectly related through legitimacy.
 This finding suggests that, at least in the Australian
context, performance-based, instrumental factors
influence citizen satisfaction with police.
 However, satisfaction with the way police do their job
was not found to impact the willingness to cooperate,
suggesting that the legitimacy of the police is the
guiding factor for willingness to cooperate.
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Questions?
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FBI Research
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FBI Killed in the Line of Duty
 51 incidents, which occurred between 1975 and 1985 in
which 50 offenders murdered 54 law enforcement
officers in the USA.
 FBI interviewed the 50 offenders in order to construct
a typology of their personalities.
 Second, officers who knew the victim officer and some
of the offenders were interviewed to discover what
exactly happened during the incident.
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FBI Killed in the Line of Duty
 The authors conclude that those who murder law
enforcement officers suffer from a personality disorder,
AND that victim officers often
 made some kind of error when dealing with their
murderer, and that murdered officers share common
personality traits.
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Victim officer personality
 The victim officers were often described as easygoing,
laid back, hard working, friendly, liked by the
community, and reluctant to follow all the rules
(especially in potentially dangerous situations).
 Conclusion: friendly, likeable officers – “nice guys” –
finish last.
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CONCERNS-Sample
 Sample was consciously selected and not randomly drawn.
 Those offenders who were still incarcerated, who had
exhausted all legal appeals, and who volunteered to
participate were eligible for inclusion in the sample.
 Offenders who murdered law enforcement officers in
ambush attacks were excluded from the sample.
 This sampling frame eliminated offenders who were killed
by the police or committed suicide, died in prison, were
acquitted, were never brought to justice, were committed
to mental institutions, and who had appeals pending.
 32.2%
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Officers
 Did not start out to examine victim officers.
 The FBI did not appear to use a methodologically
sound data collection instrument. (open ended
questions).
 Some offenders were asked about the officer’s
personality, it is not clear how many were asked, or
how these offenders could be suitable judges of the
personalities of slain officers they had killed years
before
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Officers-2
 It seems unlikely that coworkers of a slain officers
would speak ill of an officer.
 Conclusions about victim officers are of very limited
use, for even if the findings about victim officers are
valid there is no comparison group to show that these
victim officers are any different than other officers who
are not killed in the line of duty.
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