Assessing the Impact of Oversight and Procedural Justice on the Attitudes of Individuals Who File Police Complaints

Abstract

This article uses the procedural justice perspective and anonymous mailed surveys to examine the effect the implementation of a new citizen oversight agency in one mid-sized Western city had on levels of satisfaction among citizens who filed complaints against police officers. The results indicate that the implementation of the oversight agency improved levels of satisfaction with certain parts of the complaint process, such as the quality of communication and the thoroughness of the process. However, the new citizen agency had no statistically significant direct effect on levels of satisfaction with either the complaint process as a whole or with complaint outcomes.