Reassessing the Relationship Between Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

• Published in: Law and human behavior Vol. 44; no. 5; pp. 377 - 393
• Main Authors: Pina-Sánchez, Jose, Brunton-Smith, Ian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Educational Publishing Foundation 01.10.2020
• Subjects: Adolescent; Civil Rights - psychology; Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; Criminals - psychology; Cross-Sectional Studies; Fairness; Female; Human; Humans; Internal Validity; Juvenile Delinquency; Law Enforcement; Legal Evidence; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Models, Theoretical; Police; Police Personnel; Procedural Justice; Reproducibility of Results; Social Justice - psychology; Trust - psychology; United States; Young Adult; United States; police; procedural justice; legitimacy; cross-sectional design; longitudinal data
• DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000424
• ISSN: 0147-7307

Objective: A large body of cross-sectional research has identified a positive relationship between perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy. Following Tyler's theoretical framework, studies have often interpreted the observed relationship as evidence of an unequivocal causal connection from procedural justice to legitimacy. Here we reexamined the validity of this conclusion by considering the temporal order of that association and the potential biasing effect of time-invariant third common causes. Hypotheses: (a) Past perceptions of police procedural justice would predict future perceptions of legitimacy; (b) Past perceptions of police legitimacy would predict future perceptions of procedural justice; and (c) Perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy would be associated as a result of 3rd common causes. Method: We fitted random intercepts cross-lagged panel models to 7 waves of a longitudinal sample of 1,354 young offenders (M = 16 years) from the "Pathways to Desistance" study. This allowed us to explore the directional paths between perceptions of police procedural justice and legitimacy, while controlling for time-invariant participant heterogeneity. Results: We did not find evidence of the assumed temporal association; lagged within-participant perceptions of procedural justice rarely predicted within-participant perceptions of legitimacy. We did not find evidence of a reciprocal relationship either. Instead, we detected substantial time-invariant participant heterogeneity, and evidence of legitimacy perceptions being self-reproduced. Conclusions: Our findings challenge the internal validity of the commonly reported positive associations between procedural justice and legitimacy reported in studies using cross-sectional data. Most of such association is explained away after considering time-invariant participant heterogeneity and previous perceptions of legitimacy. Public Significance Statement Young offenders' perceptions of police fairness did not predict their future perceptions of police legitimacy. Instead, changes in perceptions of police legitimacy seem to be mainly self-reproduced, determined by the individuals' own previous perceptions of police legitimacy. By all means police officers should not abandon principles of fairness in their interactions with young offenders given the many other positive effects they have on cooperation and compliance with the law. What remains unclear is the effectiveness of police fairness as a strategy to foster perceptions of police legitimacy, at least among young offenders.