Distributional and Procedural Aspects of Satisfaction With Citizen-Police Encounters

Abstract

Using data from a survey of a sample of the residents of Evanston, Illinois, the hypothesis of Thibaut and Walker—that the procedures utilized to resolve a dispute have an impact upon satisfaction that is independent of outcomes received—is tested in the context of police-citizen encounters, It is found that when citizens call the police for assistance or are stopped by the police, their perception of the fairness of their treatment by the police has an impact upon their satisfaction with the police that is independent of whether the police: (1) solve the problem about which the citizen calls; or (2) cite the citizen they have stopped for a violation of the law. These findings suggest that issues of procedural justice have a much broader range of applicability than to the courtroom settings within which they have previously been studied.