Perceptions Of Police Legitimacy Research Articles

Public response to community engagement patrols in high crime areas

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate an experiment to improve residents’ opinions of the police in Portland, Oregon. Officers conducted community engagement patrols (CEPs) in 60 high-crime areas. The CEPs prioritized non-investigative contacts with community members to build trust and promote positive police–community interactions in designated high-crime locations. It is hypothesized that community members living in/near intervention sites would report greater exposure to officers, more positive interactions and feel more positively about police than residents in control areas.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 90 crime hot spots were identified using crime reports and calls for service. Locations were randomized into three groups: 2 CEPs/day (n=30), 4 CEPs/day (n=30), and control (i.e. no supplemental patrols,n=30). Officers were dispatched to treatment locations via the computer-aided dispatch system for 90 consecutive days, resulting in 16,200 scheduled CEPs. Surveys were mailed to 11,760 households immediately after the intervention ended and 1,537 were returned (13.1 percent).FindingsResidents from intervention areas reported a higher number of positive police contacts, whereas contacts that residents perceived as negative did not differ between the three conditions. Community attitudes, including perceived police legitimacy, were generally unaffected by CEP dosage.Originality/valueThis paper documents the outcomes of a large-scale field experiment seeking to improve public attitudes toward police using directed CEPs in crime hot spots. Whereas the intervention succeeded in providing more opportunities for positive contact with police, attitude change may necessitate longer-term strategies.

Validating the Police Legitimacy Scale with a Canadian Sample

For years, scholars and law enforcement agencies have been interested in examining the public’s perceptions of police legitimacy. However, previous studies have operationalized “police legitimacy” in a wide variety of ways. In an attempt to standardize this construct, Tankebe, Reisig, and Wang (2016) recently developed and validated the Police Legitimacy Scale using samples from the United States and Ghana. To determine the validity of this scale in a Canadian context, we had 2,962 Canadian community members complete a demographics survey as well as Tankebe et al.’s (2016) Police Legitimacy Scale. Descriptive statistics suggest the majority of responses to the scale do not differ across demographic factors, such as gender or race. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis indicate the previously proposed four-factor model of police legitimacy (lawfulness, procedural fairness, distributive fairness, and effectiveness) strongly fits participants’ responses.

Towards Professionalism and Police Legitimacy? An Examination of the Education and Training Reforms of the Police in the Republic of Ireland

In this paper, we present a thought piece examining recent core policing reforms introduced in the Republic of Ireland (ROI), responding to a perceived crisis of legitimacy, for An Garda Síochána (AGS) (translated: ‘The Guardian of the Peace’). Central to this process is the critical reform of the education and training of police and their relationship to the professionalisation and legitimacy of policing. In this paper, we put forward an explorative analysis of the potential link between the professional education of police and their perceived legitimacy. A literature review was carried out on the reform process, including the related elements of police education, training, professionalisation, community policing, police legitimacy, code of ethics (CoE) and police culture. We consider the espoused ambition to professionalise policing via processes including the provision of professional learning in universities and how this might be deemed to contribute (or not) to legitimacy. While no empirical research to date has been carried out on these specific reforms in the ROI, the reform recommendations had several resonances with broader examination of the themes and challenges (in particular police ethics and culture) associated with reform of democratic policing in other jurisdictions, particularly with respect to increasing professional learning and perceived police legitimacy.

Legal Socialization in Brazil: Examining the Generalizability of the Procedural Justice Model

Research examining the legal socialization process continues to be almost exclusively focused on US adolescents, calling into question the generalizability of this body of work. The purpose of this study was to test a popular model of legal socialization — the procedural justice model — amongst a representative sample of young adolescents in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Approximately 750 12 year-olds completed a survey assessing their direct and vicarious contact with police, judgments of police procedural justice, crime perceptions, police legitimacy, legal cynicism, and criminal offending. Both direct and indirect experience with the police was associated with lower procedural justice. Police legitimacy was associated with both procedural justice and crime perceptions; however, legal cynicism was only associated with perceptions of crime. Finally, higher perceptions of police legitimacy, but not legal cynicism, was associated with lower levels of self-reported offending. Overall, this study showed mixed support for the generalizability of the procedural justice model of legal socialization. While the links among police contact, procedural justice, police legitimacy, and offending were substantively identical to findings from the US, no support was found for the argument of legal cynicism as an additional mechanism linking police contact to criminal offending in youth.

How Do the Components of Procedural Justice and Driver Race Influence Encounter-Specific Perceptions of Police Legitimacy During Traffic Stops?

Procedural justice is often recognized as the key antecedent of police legitimacy. However, less is known about how the components of procedural justice, treatment and decision-making quality, influence perceptions of police legitimacy. This study utilizes a 2 × 2 × 2 survey experiment to explore the direct effects of the components of procedural justice, and the moderating effects of driver race, on perceptions of encounter-specific fairness and legitimacy. Results indicate that treatment quality is a more salient predictor of encounter-specific fairness and legitimacy than decision-making quality. In addition, simple effects analyses reveal that driver race moderates perceptions of encounter-specific fairness but not encounter-specific perceptions of legitimacy. The findings imply that police officers should emphasize respectful treatment during encounters with the public.

Addressing the “black box” of focused deterrence: an examination of the mechanisms of change in Chicago’s Project Safe Neighborhoods

Chicago’s Project Safe Neighborhoods focused deterrence program is an effective crime reduction policy. However, similar to other focused deterrence programs, prior evaluations have not empirically established the mechanisms of change believed to underlie the program. The purpose of this paper was to address this gap by examining the influence of offender notification meetings—a key component of the program—on three mechanisms: perceptions of risks associated with future offending, perceptions of police legitimacy, and adherence to community norms. Over a 1-year period, parolees attending the notification meetings were randomly assigned to complete surveys assessing each of the mechanisms immediately before the meeting (control) or immediately after (treatment). Parolees in the treatment condition had higher perceptions of risk and police legitimacy compared to those in the control condition. Additionally, they were more likely to judge police as procedurally fair. The groups did not differ with respect to adherence to community norms. Within both groups, perception of risk was positively associated with motivation to stay out of prison. Police legitimacy was also positively associated with motivation for the treatment group, while community norm adherence was positively associated with motivation for those in the control condition. This study indicates that the offender notification meetings are working as intended with respect to the underlying mechanisms of change embedded in Chicago’s Project Safe Neighborhoods.

Harmonizing Legal Socialization to Reduce Antisocial Behavior: Results from a Randomized Field Trial of Truanting Young People

Legal socialization conceptualizes two processes for attaining compliance as either consensus-based or coercive-based. However, in real life, an adolescent’s exposure to police and school authorities is likely to incorporate a blend of both the consensual and coercive systems of compliance. In this article, we examine how harmonizing the way that police and school authorities engage with young people using a consensus-based legal socialization approach might influence a young person’s self-reported antisocial behavior. Drawing data from a randomized field trial of the Ability School Engagement Program in Brisbane, Australia, we find that a young person’s participation in the consensus-based program impacts self-reported antisocial behavior over time indirectly through changes in perceptions of police legitimacy, but not through changes in perceptions of school legitimacy. We conclude that young people are more likely to obey the law when they are exposed to harmonized legal socialization experiences, but it is a young person’s view of police that matters more for compliance with the law than how they view school authorities.

Exploring procedural justice and police legitimacy in South Africa

Perceptions of legitimacy are at the foundation of public mandates underlying criminal justice institutions, their legal authority, and public cooperation. This study explored perceptions of South African policing by members of a historically disadvantaged community, in terms of the procedural justice and their perceptions of police legitimacy. Participants comprised of a convenience sample of 399 young and adult black Africans from low socio-economic urban and rural communities (females = 28%; mean age = 23.4 years, SD = 6.03 years). They completed a self-report survey on procedural justice from a policing point of view. Descriptive analysis of the data suggested that community members perceive the police to be higher in distributive justice and lower in police legitimacy. Overall, the community members were marginally satisfied with the police services.

Turning the corner on procedural justice theory: exploring reverse causality with an experimental vignette in a longitudinal survey

Traditional police procedural justice theory argues that citizen perceptions of fair treatment by police officers increase police legitimacy, which leads to an increased likelihood of legal compliance. Recently, Nagin and Telep (2017) criticized these causal assumptions, arguing that prior literature has not definitively ruled out reverse causality—that is, legitimacy influences perceptions of fairness and/or compliance influences perceptions of both fairness and legitimacy. The goal of the present paper was to explore this critique using experimental and correlational methodologies within a longitudinal framework. Adolescents completed a vignette-based experiment that manipulated two aspects of officer behavior linked to perceptions of fairness: voice and impartiality. After reading the vignette, participants rated the fairness and legitimacy of the officer within the situation. At three time points prior to the experiment (1, 17, and 31 months), participants completed surveys measuring their global perceptions of police legitimacy and self-reported delinquency. Data were analyzed to assess the extent to which global legitimacy and delinquency predicted responses to the vignette net of experimental manipulations and controls. Both experimental manipulations led to higher perceptions of situational procedural justice and officer legitimacy. Prior perceptions of police legitimacy did not predict judgments of situational procedural justice; however, in some cases, prior engagement in delinquency was negatively related to situational procedural justice. Prior perceptions of legitimacy were positively associated with situational perceptions of legitimacy regardless of experimental manipulations. This study showed mixed support for the case of reverse causality among police procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliance.

Legal socialisation in Brazil: examining the generalisability of the procedural justice model

ABSTRACTResearch examining the legal socialisation process continues to be largely focused on US adolescents, calling into question the generalisability of this work. This study tests a popular model of legal socialisation – the procedural justice model – using a sample of youth in São Paulo, Brazil. Approximately, 750 12-year-olds completed a survey assessing their direct and vicarious contact with police, judgements of police procedural justice, crime perceptions, police legitimacy, legal cynicism, and criminal offending. Both direct and indirect experiences with the police were associated with lower procedural justice. Police legitimacy was associated with both procedural justice and crime perceptions; however, legal cynicism was only associated with perceptions of crime. Finally, higher perceptions of police legitimacy, but not legal cynicism, were associated with lower levels of self-reported offending. Overall, this study showed mixed support for the generalisability of the procedural justice model of legal socialisation.

Police legitimacy: perspectives of migrants and non-migrants in Australia

PurposeThis paper is drawn from a larger study investigating community perceptions of police legitimacy in the Monash Local Government Area (LGA), in the Australian state of Victoria. Monash had seen declining results in the official government survey in the indicators that assessed police legitimacy over the preceding decade. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of both migrant and non-migrant participants to understand the role of migrant status in influencing assessments of police legitimacy in Monash LGA.Design/methodology/approachThrough six focus groups, 18 interviews and one e-mail response with 31 individuals, perceptions of Victoria Police among the communities of Monash were collated and analysed.FindingsOne of the key findings of the study was that ethnic diversity and/or migrant status of community members were a key factor raised in response to questions about community perceptions of the legitimacy of Victoria Police in Monash LGA. Demographic change had been significant in Monash LGA over the preceding decade, including increasing ethnic diversity in the population and a shift in migration patterns from predominantly European to migrants from East and South Asia. In this paper, the authors suggest that the migrant status of Monash residents was a key factor that both migrant and non-migrant participants thought influenced perceptions of the police. Accordingly, because migrants make up a significant cohort of Australia’s population, we afford due attention to this previously overlooked topic.Practical implicationsThe practical implications of this paper are as follows: existing Victoria Police partnerships in the Monash community should be continued and expanded where possible; Victoria Police should also prioritise partnerships with large, new migrant communities, for example, Monash’s Chinese communities; orientation for new migrants to Victoria around the criminal justice system, including Victoria Police, would help new migrants be more aware of their rights and what to expect of law enforcement in their new host country; police should continue to increase representation of ethnic diversity in the force via recruitment of greater numbers of ethnically diverse police members.Originality/valueAlthough there have been previous Australian studies on migrant status as a factor in perceptions of criminal justice (see Murphy and Cherney, 2011, 2012; Hong Chui and Kwok-Yin Cheng, 2014), the paper identifies a distinct narrative around migrants’ views of Victoria Police which the authors believe warrant further investigation using an example from a local context. Furthermore, most research in this field has been quantitative. The current study provides additional new insights through an in-depth qualitative approach.

Assessing LGBT People’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

ABSTRACT Although lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have achieved increased acceptance and access to social institutions in recent years, they have continued to be confronted with persistent homophobic attitudes, including from U.S. law enforcement personnel. Police culture often fosters these beliefs, and consequently results in the under-policing of LGBT citizens when victimized, but over-policing in places of leisure. This relationship is exacerbated when considering the intersectional effect of gender and sexual orientation, undoubtedly impacting legitimacy perceptions due to perceived (and actual) procedural injustice. Using original data collected at an LGBT festival in Arizona (N = 428), the current study examines the relationship between procedural justice and perceptions of police legitimacy among a historically marginalized population. Implications for theory and policy are discussed, with special attention given to contextualizing the findings within the current legitimacy crisis faced by American law enforcement.

Turning the Corner on Procedural Justice Theory: Exploring Reverse Causality with an Experimental Vignette in a Longitudinal Survey

Objectives: Traditional police procedural justice theory argues that citizen perceptions of fair treatment by police officers increases police legitimacy, which leads to an increased likelihood of legal compliance. Recently, Nagin and Telep (2017) criticized these causal assumptions, arguing that prior literature has not definitively ruled out reverse causality — i.e., that legitimacy influences perceptions of fairness and/or compliance influences perceptions of both fairness and legitimacy. The goal of the present paper was to explore this critique using experimental and correlational methodology within a longitudinal framework. Methods: Adolescents completed a vignette-based experiment that manipulated two aspects of officer behavior linked to perceptions of fairness: voice and impartiality. After reading the vignette, participants rated the fairness and legitimacy of the officer within the situation. At three time points prior to the experiment (1, 17, and 31 months) participants completed surveys measuring their global perceptions of police legitimacy and self-reported delinquency. Data were analyzed to assess the extent to which global legitimacy and delinquency predicted responses to the vignette, net of experimental manipulations and controls. Results: Both experimental manipulations led to higher perceptions of situational procedural justice and officer legitimacy. Prior perceptions of police legitimacy did not predict judgments of situational procedural justice; however, in some cases prior engagement in delinquency was negatively related to situational procedural justice. Prior perceptions of legitimacy were positively associated with situational perceptions of legitimacy regardless of experimental manipulations. Conclusions: This study showed mixed support for the case of reverse causality among police procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliance.

Perception of police legitimacy among private security officers

The private security market is growing around the world, and public police are no longer the predominant agents of order maintenance and crime prevention. This development has important implications as different policing agents come in contact with each other. Specifically, understanding how they view each other can help increase the benefits of today’s paradigm of security governance. Despite abundant research on citizen perceptions of police, few studies explore private security officers’ opinions about their public counterparts. Therefore, this research explores private security officers’ perceptions of the police in South Korea. Results show that the respondents’ attitudes toward police performance and distributive and procedural justice have varying influences on the three dimensions of police legitimacy: Obligation to obey, trust, and normative alignment. Additionally, the authors suggest the police should understand that private security officers’ perceptions of police legitimacy are influenced by distinct factors depending on contact experience and employment type.

Minority Perception of Police Legitimacy in Finland: The Patterns and Predictors

Across the world, minorities are often perceived as social problems in policy formulations and processes in many societies. This perspective gets support from the notion that minorities engage in deviant and criminal behaviour. However, in Finland fewer scholarly attentions have explored the extent of minority attitudes and experiences as they relate to social problems in societies. The aim of this study is to explore procedural justice and its understanding thereof by minorities and racial groups in Finland in complying with police orders. Data for this study was collected between April 2013 and July 2015 from (N = 650) respondents from three major cities (Helsinki, Tampere and Turku) using minority experiences of racial profiling, encounters and unfair policing as variables that increase minority distrust in procedural justice in Finland. The result suggests that ethnicity influences minority views of procedural justice in the country. The implication of this finding is that there is a need for more exploration of the relationship between the police and minorities in Finland.

Body Worn Cameras, Procedural Justice, and Police Legitimacy: A Controlled Experimental Evaluation of Traffic Stops

Police legitimacy is generally regarded as a view among community members that police departments play an appropriate role in implementing rules governing public conduct. Placing body worn cameras (BWCs) on police officers has been suggested as a potentially important response to police legitimacy crises. We use a rigorous controlled quasi-experimental evaluation to test the impact of BWCs on citizen perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy during traffic stops in Turkey. Relative to stops by officers without BWCs, we find that motorists stopped by officers with BWCs reported improved perceptions of procedural justice in the encounter and perceptions of legitimacy of traffic officers and the police more generally. Supplementary analyses suggest that the perceived improvements in police legitimacy were entirely driven by perceived enhancements in procedural justice during the traffic stop encounter. These findings suggest that body camera technology help ensure procedurally just encounters and improve public perceptions of police legitimacy.

Effect of SNS(Polinlove) on Perception of Police Legitimacy

Effect of SNS(Polinlove) on Perception of Police Legitimacy

Racialized perceptions of the police

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine differences in latent structures/dimensions in public perceptions of the police by race/ethnicity and level of identification with a given race/ethnic group.Design/methodology/approachTo identify differences in dimensions of juveniles’ perceptions of the police by the sub-samples, factor analyses were conducted utilizing data from the Gang Resistance Education and Training program evaluation.FindingsThe results show that minority juveniles have a relatively fragmented dimensional structure for the construct of perceptions of the police, while white juveniles have a unidimensional structure. Furthermore, moderate within-group differences in structures were found among African–American juveniles.Research limitations/implicationsThe results of the current study call for further examination of racial invariant assumptions in criminology. Since individual dimensions constituting perceptions of the police vary by race/ethnicity, those dimensions may potentially have unique associations with endogenous variables (e.g. criminality and cooperation with the police) according to individuals’ racial/ethnic membership.Practical implicationsPolice should clearly understand individuals’ dimensions constituting perceptions of the police and should identify dimensions that greatly impact precursors to compliance and cooperation with police such as perceived police legitimacy or perceived risk of sanction.Originality/valueIndividuals’ dimensions constituting perceptions of the police have significant implications on the construction of measures and their associations with other variables; however, racial differences in these dimensions have not been explored since Sullivan et al.’s (1987) research about three decades ago. In addition, the current study examined within-race differences in the dimensions constituting perceptions of the police.

Perceptions of Police Legitimacy and Citizen Decisions to Report Hate Crime Incidents in Australia

This article examines the importance of perceptions of police legitimacy in the decision to report hate crime incidents in Australia. It addresses an identified gap in the literature by analysing the 2011-2012 National Security and Preparedness Survey (NSPS) results to not only explore differences between hate crime and non-hate crime reporting but also how individual characteristics and perceptions of legitimacy influence decisions about reporting crime to police. Using the NSPS survey data, we created three Generalised Linear Latent and Mixed Models (Gllamm), which explore the influence of individual characteristics and potential barriers on the decision to report crime/hate crime incidents to police. Our results suggest that hate crimes are less likely to be reported to police in comparison to non-hate crime incidents, and that more positive perceptions of police legitimacy and police cooperation are associated with the victim’s decision to report hate crime victimisation.

On the justification of intergroup violence: The roles of procedural justice, police legitimacy, and group identity in attitudes toward violence among indigenous people.

Objective Why do people justify intergroup violence? In this paper we examine attitudes towards violence perpetrated by indigenous activists to claim for rights and violence by police officers against indigenous people. We assess the role that perceived police legitimacy, procedurally just policing towards the indigenous minority group and group identity play in the justification of intergroup violence. Method We present findings from two surveys (Study 1, n=1493, Study 2, n=198) and an experiment (Study 3, n=76) conducted among indigenous people in Chile. Studies 1 and 2 measure perceptions of police procedural justice towards indigenous people. Study 3 manipulates the fairness with which police officers treat indigenous people. Effects of procedural justice on police legitimacy (Studies 2 and 3) and attitudes towards violence for social change and social control (Studies 1-3) are analyzed. Result Higher perceptions of procedurally just policing towards indigenous people predict more support for police violence and less support for violence perpetrated by indigenous activists. These effects are mediated by perceived police legitimacy and moderated by identification with the minority group. Among people who identify strongly with their indigenous group, perceiving high procedural justice predicts greater police legitimacy, greater support for police violence, and lesser support for violence perpetrated by indigenous activists.