Internal Procedural Justice Research Articles

The collateral consequences of GPS-LED supervision in hot spots policing

AbstractHot spots policing is popular, yet little is known about officer receptivity to the tactic and its impact on internal procedural justice, organizational commitment, and self-legitimacy. The nature of the tactic means that officers must relinquish their discretionary powers so that they can be directed to crime and disorder locations at specific times and for regimented durations. This loss of ‘spatiotemporal autonomy’ is exacerbated by technological tracking devices. We examined the receptivity of British officers to hot spots patrols, where the deployment was tracked with individual GPS trackers, compared to parallel patrols without hot spots policing or tracking. In contrast to the comparison group, officers in hot spots disliked the routinization of their shifts; regimented patrols were detrimental for internal procedural justice and organizational commitment. The ramifications of the introduction of GPS-enabled systems include certain tracking of officers and their compliance, such as a Taylor...

Achieving Fairness in Policing

Decades of research on public support for the police has documented the prominent role of procedural justice in shaping popular views of police legitimacy and the predisposition of citizens to comply and cooperate with them. However, much less attention has been given to the issue of how to get police officers to actually act in accord with its principles when they interact with the public. Reminders of the importance and the difficulty of fostering police legitimacy are not hard to come by, as witnessed in events in the United States during 2014 to 2015. This article addresses the hard, multifaceted issue of fostering procedural justice in the ranks. It theorizes and assesses the relationship between fair supervision and fair policing. The results of our study indicate that perceived internal procedural justice is directly related to support for external procedural justice (modeling thesis), and also indirectly, via trust in citizens.

Explaining officer compliance: The importance of procedural justice and trust inside a police organization

The extent to which police officers obey instructions and policies is of permanent concern to police leaders and the community. This is especially the case when it comes to preventing police misconduct, such as the use of excessive force. In the current study we examined officer compliance from a procedural justice and social exchange perspective. Using data collected among 536 police officers of the Metropolitana Police in Buenos Aires, we explored to what extent internal procedural justice and trust are related to: (1) officer compliance with supervisors and policies; and (2) officer endorsement of regulations on the use of force. The results indicate that perceptions of fair treatment by supervisors and trust in supervisors are positively associated with (stated) compliance. Our findings suggest that a procedural justice approach may facilitate the implementation of police policies and contribute to preventing police violence.