Procedural Justice Research Research Articles

Procedural Justice, Perceived Legitimacy, and Reoffending Behavior: In Police and Court Setting

Despite the increasing body of procedural justice research studying individuals involved in the criminal justice system, this strand of literature has used different approaches to measure procedural justice and legitimacy. The present study assesses the different theoretical assumptions of these approaches across two criminal justice settings, namely, policing and courts. In addition, we examine how procedural justice stemming from interactions with police officers and judges is related to legitimacy and reoffending behavior postrelease. Using data on adult detainees who entered Dutch pretrial detention centers, our findings support the theoretical assumptions regarding procedural justice and felt obligation to obey the law in both criminal justice settings. Furthermore, path analyses show that perceptions of procedural justice arising from encounters with police officers and judges are related to a higher sense of obligation to obey the law, which in turn is associated with a lower risk of reoffending.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Victim Participation in the Search for Disappeared Persons, a Contribution to (Procedural) Justice

ABSTRACT Enforced disappearance is a human rights violation and crime widely used in repression and armed conflict contexts. The families of the forcibly disappeared are left in a state of ambiguous loss as they search for the disappeared to satisfy their right to truth and achieve healing and closure. However, there is limited knowledge of the obstacles that hinder the search in practice and of how families can best be supported when mobilizing in search processes. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, using insights from procedural justice research and qualitative interviews undertaken with families and other actors involved in supporting search processes in Colombia and El Salvador, we enhance and expand the scholarship that acknowledges the importance of victim participation and victims as key justice stakeholders.

Designing a Multilateral Investment Court for Procedural Justice

Abstract Working Group III of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law has embarked on a mandate to reform investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS), through identifying a set of concerns that merit multilateral procedural reform. In response, the EU has proposed creating a standing multilateral investment court. Despite the importance of procedural justice theory in domestic legal systems, its value as a resource in international dispute resolution is under-recognized. This article focuses on procedural justice through the literature on the social psychology of justice, as offering an empirically-based theoretical foundation that helps identify key elements and options in designing investment adjudication. Within ISDS reform, the authors focus on necessary innovations in independence and impartiality, transparency, participation, and correction of error, the key pillars of procedural justice research. The EU proposal suggests substituting a more traditional judicial model of dispute resolution for the current and problematic arbitral model, which aligns to a greater degree with the principles of procedural justice.

Broadening the Lens of Procedural Justice Beyond the Courtroom: A Case Study of Legal Financial Obligations in the Juvenile Court

Procedural justice research has shown how people’s experiences with courtroom actors, such as judges, defense attorneys, and prosecutors, shape their views of the justice system and its legitimacy. However, less is known about how people’s experiences outside the courtroom that relate to their cases shape their views of this system. Based on forty-one interviews with twenty-one youths and twenty parents in Dane County, Wisconsin about their legal financial obligations (also known as monetary sanctions), this study broadens the focus of procedural justice to include another key aspect to people’s experiences with the law beyond the courtroom: their experiences navigating bureaucratic aspects to their youths’ cases and their interactions with non-court staff (e.g., clerks, Human Services, and community agencies), otherwise known as “auxiliary personnel” (Feeley 1979) or “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky 2010/1980). We focus on legal financial obligations as a case study to show this multi-agency view of procedural justice as it reveals the families’ often disjointed experiences with justice staff both inside and outside of the courtroom.

“Okay sir, I’m gonna ask you to sign here”: Closing sequences as collaborative social action in traffic encounters

The police are more likely to arrest, write citations, and reciprocate with coercive responses that involve warnings and threats when citizens disrespect and resist the police. Warnings in natural discourse are considered to be benevolent and differ from threats only in the intention and attitude of those who issue such speech acts. This article examines how ordinary features of talk-in-interaction are adapted to meet the institutional exigencies of patrol work, and how the interactional order of closing sequences in traffic encounters are collaboratively produced by police and drivers alike. We analyze 50 traffic encounters involving mundane infractions such as speeding and running a red light from the United States using principles of conversation analysis. Our findings indicate that closing sequences can be viewed as mutually accomplished social action in three distinct ways that are similar to and different from ordinary conversations. The implications for police studies and procedural justice research are discussed.

Procedural fairness: Between human rights law and social psychology

Fair procedures have long been a topic of great interest for human rights lawyers. Yet, few authors have drawn on research from other disciplines to enrich the discussion. Social psychological procedural justice research has demonstrated in various applications that, besides the final outcome, the manner in which one’s case is handled matters to people as well. Such research has shown the impact of procedural justice on individuals’ well-being, their acceptance of unfavourable decisions, perceptions of legitimacy and public confidence. The ECtHR has confirmed the desirability of these effects in its fair trial jurisprudence. Thus far, it remains unclear to what extent the guarantees offered by Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial) coincide with the findings of empirical procedural justice research. This article aims to rectify this and uncover similarities between the two disciplines.

Juror motivations: applying procedural justice theory to juror decision making

ABSTRACT Jurors sometimes consider inadmissible evidence in their verdicts, despite judicial instructions to disregard that evidence. Procedural justice research suggests this is because jurors are motivated to prioritise just outcomes over due process; thus, jurors’ non-compliance towards judicial instructions to disregard inadmissible evidence may be the product of a discrepancy between legal and lay peoples’ understanding of the juror’s role. In this mixed-method design, we examined 294 university students’ a priori perceptions about the role and responsibility of jurors, and empirically tested how randomly assigning participants to the role of a juror (versus a judge’s associate/assistant, who helps the judge to ensure a trial is conducted according to proper procedure) influenced their verdict decisions, prioritisation of outcome versus procedural considerations, motivation to protect the community, and perceived obligation to ensure correct procedures. Overall, the results demonstrated ambivalence in lay people’s perceptions of the juror role, with many participants perceiving jurors to be responsible for protecting society; however, we did not find support for our predictions that participants assigned the role of a juror (versus judge’s associate) would more strongly prioritise outcomes over procedures. Methodological issues, recommendations for future research, and implications are also discussed.

Beyond the quantitative and qualitative divide: The salience of discourse in procedural justice policing research

The dominant methods of studying police have involved quantitative analyses of surveys and systematic social observations of police behavior or qualitative methods such as ethnographies and interviews. The same trend applies to procedural justice research in policing. In prior works, the question of how police officers and citizens interact in situ is absent. We argue that procedural justice police research should move beyond the quantitative/qualitative distinction and consider other ways to collect and analyze data. We begin by providing a methodological critique of procedural justice research, and demonstrate the assumptions of discourse in extant works before we provide a blueprint for how to incorporate discourse analytic methods in the study of procedural justice and policing.

Women’s Experiences in the Revolving Door of the Criminal Justice System: Implications for Their Imagined Futures

Despite the notable expansion in research on mass incarceration and reentry, we know relatively little about how women who have spent a good portion of their lives enmeshed in the criminal justice system view these experiences and how these experiences might shape their imagined future lives. We address this gap by examining the narratives of 16 black and 35 white persistent offenders imprisoned in Pennsylvania. Our findings suggest that black women report more negative criminal justice experiences than white women and that, regardless of the nature of these encounters, white women tend to have more optimist outlooks for their futures. This suggests that the racialization of structural advantages and disadvantages may compound the women’s salient criminal justice encounters. The implication of these findings for procedural justice, reentry and desistance research are discussed.

The Application of Procedural Justice Research to Judicial Actions and Techniques in Settlement Sessions

This paper presents a questionnaire that is a work in progress. The questionnaire is designed primarily to assess lawyers’ perceptions of the procedural justice offered by judicial settlement sessions in individual civil, non-family cases. The questionnaire may be used by: judges seeking confidential feedback on their management of settlement sessions; individual courts or court systems seeking systematic information regarding their judges’ settlement efforts; and larger empirical research projects. To explain the need for the questionnaire, the paper provides a brief contextual history of judicial settlement in the U.S., including the evolution of relevant rules of civil procedure and judicial ethics provisions and the current state of judicial performance evaluation. Because the logic of the questionnaire is grounded in procedural justice, the paper also examines the procedural elements that most reliably lead to perceptions of procedural fairness: the opportunity for voice; respectful treatment from the decision-maker; even-handed treatment by the decision-maker and neutrality of the forum; and trustworthy consideration from the decision-maker. The questionnaire is designed to expand upon the current state of knowledge regarding the procedural justice provided by judicial settlement by asking questions designed to identify: 1) the concrete judicial actions that occur during settlement sessions; 2) the relationship between these concrete actions and lawyers' (and clients') perceptions of procedural and substantive justice; and 3) the influence of certain contextual factors upon such perceptions (e.g., whether the settlement judge is the presiding judge, whether the judicial action occurred in joint session or caucus, and whether the parties suggested or requested the settlement session). The lawyer questionnaire is the first of a planned set of questionnaires on judicial settlement that will also include questionnaires for clients and judges.

“Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t”

Procedural justice research generally indicates that legitimacy produces compliance when people perceive the law and legal actors to be fair. Drawing upon 140 in-depth interviews with gun offenders detained in Los Angeles County jails, this article examines legal and extra-legal factors that influence illegal gun possession. Although prior research studies on legal and illegal gun carrying have suggested a relationship between (a) safety perceptions and possession and (b) legal perceptions and possession, few have deeply interrogated how such perceptions develop and interact to inform ideas of legitimacy and compliance with gun laws. Our findings suggest that feelings of insecurity coupled with perceptions of, and experiences with, law enforcement interacted in complex ways to condition legitimacy-based beliefs, and ultimately, compliance. Although many of our respondents viewed the law as legitimate in the abstract, they believed it to be illegitimate in individual application, especially where rules and sanctions failed to account for personal experiences of insecurity.

Perceptions of Procedural Justice Among Young People: Narratives of Fair Treatment in Young People’s Stories of Police and Security Guard Interventions

This article examines how young people conceptualize typical narratives of fair and unfair treatment by police and security guards. It offers new insights for procedural justice research of how to constitute trust between citizens and authorities by including private security and by using qualitative methods. 31 youths in 9 focus groups continued stories towards (1) fair and (2) unfair encounters. The key difference in these stories was related to how authorities treat people. Fair narratives consisted of peaceful and predictable interactions and mutual respect. Intervening did not challenge trust when young people perceived that the control agents’ work task legitimated the intervention. Unfair narratives consisted of impolite and aggressive treatment. Narratives about the police were closer to fair treatment than narratives about security guards. The article also suggests that prior procedural justice research has neglected the importance of the emotional state of the control agent: ideal control agents had an ability to be empathetic and to control their negative emotions. The findings support the procedural justice in highlighting the importance of fair treatment.

Turning defiance into compliance with procedural justice: Understanding reactions to regulatory encounters through motivational posturing

AbstractThis paper usesBraithwaite's motivational posturing framework to explain how individuals react to encounters with regulatory authorities. Of interest is whetherprocedural justicecan reduce defiance and improve self‐reported compliance among individuals who are either resistant or dismissive of regulatory authority. Using longitudinal survey data collected from tax offenders (Study 1), and individuals who had a recent police‐citizen interaction (Study 2), it will be shown that procedural justice can promote compliance behavior. Procedural justice is also found to be effective for reducing resistant forms of defiance over time, but not dismissive defiance. Further, the results reveal that neither resistant defiance nor dismissive defiance moderate the effect of procedural justice on compliance, suggesting procedural justice works equally well for both low and high resisters and low and high disengagers. Finally, an unexpected result reveals that resistance, but not dismissive defiance, mediates the effect of procedural justice on self‐reported compliance behavior. The findings have implications for procedural justice research and for the regulation of defiance.

Procedural Justice Seen to Be Done:<br>The Judiciary’s Press Guidelines in the Light of Publicity and Procedural Justice

As in other jurisdictions, the Dutch judiciary has been confronted with public unease about criminal justice and is trying to enhance its legitimacy. System and culture however contain hardly any opening for public involvement in criminal justice, and this implication of the publicity principle traditionally encounters disapproval. In its aim of (re)gaining confidence in the criminal justice system, publicity intertwines procedural fairness and public influence: it requires that the (perception of the) lay public is taken into account when conducting proceedings and phrasing the judgment, thereby ensuring visible conformity with publicly-held fairness standards and thus a perception of legitimacy by participants and the public alike. Procedural justice research confirms these notions in finding that the perception of proceedings as fair legitimizes the judiciary and the justice system. The judiciary’s wish to enhance transparency – of which the press guidelines (2013) are the most important expression – is therefore essential. Both publicity and the procedural justice concept refer to the procedure as central in legitimization and therefore provide important arguments for allowing the audiovisual registration of criminal proceedings. As system and culture do not change easily, this may lead to more public-minded proceedings and to a shift in the public debate towards procedure.

Incorporating consensus and conflict into the legitimacy of law

Recent research on the legitimacy of law is dominated by the confirmed effect of procedural justice on views of legitimacy. The procedural justice research, however, neglects the substantive component of law and how that substance may conflict with value systems of the various subcultures that constitute a complex society. This paper reviews classic and contemporary theory, as well as supporting empirical criminological research, in order to argue that views of the legitimacy of a given law can also be affected by such conflicting value sets. Allotting subculture a central influence, a model is proposed that integrates a sociological conception of the legitimacy of law with the existing research from psychology on procedural justice.

A Justice-Power Perspective on Middle Managers’ Involvement in Strategy Process

This study investigates the effect of middle managers’ strategy involvement on their commitment to organizational strategies and their strategic alignment with the CEO. We stress the mediating role of managers’ procedural justice perceptions about the strategic decision-making process, and the moderating role of hierarchical position. Data from 342 middle managers in a large service organization support our theorization. Our results ascertain that although strategic involvement leads to enhanced procedural justice perceptions of the strategy formation at all hierarchical levels, its effect on strategic alignment is higher for the managers at the lower organizational levels. We also unearth the multi-level effects of team level variables, such as the consistency of a strategic involvement pattern among middle management peers. This study expands the procedural justice research in strategy formation to middle and lower levels of the organization while providing empirical evidence for the importance of strategic involvement in successful strategy implementation. We discuss several theoretical and practical implications.

Promoting trust in police: findings from a randomised experimental field trial of procedural justice policing

This paper reports findings from the world's first randomised experimental field trial of procedural justice policing. We tested whether or not procedural justice could be used by police agencies during short, routine traffic stops to increase public trust and confidence in police. Using survey data from 2762 Australian drivers who had been exposed to either a procedural justice script (experimental condition) or a standard police procedure (control condition), it was found that trust and confidence in police was higher in the experimental condition. This was even the case after respondents' demographic background and general perceptions of police were taken into account. Similar effects were not found for drivers' obligation to obey police, nor their willingness to cooperate with police. Importantly, however, trust in police did predict both obligation to obey police and the willingness to cooperate with police. The findings have important implications for procedural justice research and policing practice.

Organizational and supervisory justice effects on experienced threat during change: The moderating role of leader in-group representativeness

We explore the complex interplay between organizational justice and supervisory justice when predicting group members' threat perceptions in a context of organizational change. Based on the assumptions of relational models of procedural justice and prior research done in the multifoci justice framework, we hypothesize that the extent to which a supervisor is seen to embody and represent key in-group attributes will moderate the interaction between the supervisor's own interactional justice and the overall organizational procedural justice. Specifically, organizational justice is expected to decrease employees' feelings of threat particularly when the supervisor treats group members fairly and is perceived to be in-group representative rather than non-representative. We found support for this hypothesis across two studies, a cross-sectional survey and a scenario experiment. The findings confirm the particularly powerful role that an in-group representative leader's interactional fairness has in managing group members' responses to fundamental organizational processes. The implications for further research and practice are discussed.

Examining macro-level impacts on procedural justice and police legitimacy

PurposeMany studies have lent empirical support to the procedural justice model of police legitimacy; however, there has, as yet, not been widespread consideration of the potential impact of neighborhood- and community-level factors on people's perceptions of procedural justice or police legitimacy. The present study integrates the macro-level policing literature with the psychological-based procedural justice framework to uncover what effects, if any, the sociostructural environment has on procedural justice and police legitimacy. MethodsHierarchical linear modeling integrates census and survey data within a single, mid-sized city. ResultsConcentrated disadvantage exerted a marginally-significant impact on procedural justice, and on police legitimacy while controlling for procedural justice. Procedural justice remained the strongest predictor of legitimacy, even when accounting for macro-level characteristics. ConclusionsThe effect of procedural justice on police legitimacy appears to be robust against the deleterious impacts of concentrated disadvantage. This has implications for procedural justice research, theory, and policing.

Understanding the Contingency of Procedural Justice Outcomes

Procedural justice theory and research have important implications for police policy and practice. There exists a large literature on the topic, with research showing that groups do respond positively to fair and respectful treatment by police. Recent research and debates particularly in the United Kingdom and Australia have drawn attention to the different and varied ways in which procedural justice has an impact on police legitimacy and cooperation with police, and the mechanisms through which this occurs. This has implications for how police scholars and practitioners understand and study police legitimacy. The authors aim to make a contribution to this emerging body of work by highlighting limitations with current procedural justice research and argue that the issues of contingency and variability have not been adequately addressed. We argue this is important when it comes to the policing of ethnic communities. The article focuses on attitudes towards the law and social distancing to highlight how procedural justice outcomes can vary across groups and contexts. In particular, we draw on Braithwaite’s (2009) theory of social distancing to explain how people’s willingness to cooperate with police can be influenced by their motivational posturing. This highlights the psychological mechanisms that impact on the effectiveness of a process-based model of policing.