Procedural justice in contacts with the police: testing a relational model of authority in a mixed methods study

By Irina Elliott, Stuart D M Thomas, J. Ogloff. 2011

98 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A relational model of authority (Tyler & Lind, 1992) emphasizes the role of procedural justice (the fairness of methods used to achieve outcomes) in public support for and evaluation of the police. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this study tested the model in the context of victim-police interactions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 110 people who had reported a crime (personal or property) to the police in the previous year. Quantitative findings supported the predictions that higher perceived antecedents of procedural justice would be associated with higher perceived legitimacy (obligation to obey the law), outcome fairness, and satisfaction with the contact. Antecedents of procedural justice were a stronger predictor of outcome fairness and satisfaction than the realization of a desired outcome, and a stronger predictor of legitimacy than criminal history. Qualitative findings supported these results. It appears that procedural justice has the potential for helping to motivate individuals with criminal history to obey the law. Implications for evaluation of police performance are discussed.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/93d324ddf93ad583f0bc7496e28b9d9747db18b8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Political Science and International Relations

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

The Impact of Procedurally-Just Policing on Citizen Perceptions of Police During Traffic Stops: The Adana Randomized Controlled Trial (2016, unknown): “In general, observational studies suggest that when police are evaluated as exercising their authority fairly in a general manner, they are viewed as more legitimate (Engel 2005; Elliott et al. 2011; Gau and Brunson 2009; Murphy et al. 2008; Reisig et al. 2007).”
Monopolizing Force? Police Legitimacy and Public Attitudes toward the Acceptability of Violence (2013, background): “…with, legitimate authorities because they feel it is the right thing to do (e.g. Tyler, 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2011a, 2011b; Bradford et al., 2013a; Elliott et al., 2011; Huq et al., 2011a, 2011b; Jackson et al., 2012a, 2012b; Mazerolle et al., 2013; Murphy & Cherney, 2012; Tyler, 2006a, 2006b;…”
Victim Willingness to Report Crime to Police: Does Procedural Justice or Outcome Matter Most? (2014, background): “In Hickman and Simpson’s (2003) study, victims were domestic violence victims only, and in Elliott et al.’s (2011) study, there was a combination of property and personal crime victims. The point that Laxminarayan and his colleagues (2013) have made is an important one because past procedural justic”
Shaping Citizen Perceptions of Police Legitimacy: A Randomized Field Trial of Procedural Justice (2013, methodology): “…drawing from previous research that found that perceptions of police legitimacy influence compliance and cooperation (e.g., Reisig, Bratton, and Gertz, 2007; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003) as well as feelings of satisfaction toward the police (Elliott, Thomas, and Ogloff, 2011; Goodman-Delahunty, 2010).”