By Matthew Radburn, Leanne Savigar-Shaw, […], and Arabella Kyprianides

Despite widespread empirical support for Procedural Justice Theory, understanding the role of police psychology in shaping encounters with ‘citizens’ is relatively opaque. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring how officers talk about themselves and their colleagues and deploy social categories to understand their interactions with ‘the public’. The qualitative thematic analysis draws upon 22 semi-structured interviews conducted with officers in various roles and teams within a large metropolitan police force in England. Our thematic analysis demonstrates the centrality of procedural fairness in officers’ talk (in terms of internal relations with colleagues and external relations with ‘the public’). Interviewees described complex internalised theories of social relations, differentially positioning themselves in relation to other colleagues and multiple ‘publics’ often depicted along socioeconomic and geographical lines. Officers described their interactions with ‘the public’ in sequential and historical terms with complex and changing (often intergroup) power dynamics. Implications of the analysis for understanding the role of social identity processes among police officers and how this underlying conceptualisation might shape police–‘citizen’ encounters are discussed.

Criminology & Criminal Justice, Volume 22, Issue 1, February 2022, Pages 59-77

By David Weisburd, Cody W. Telep , Heather Vovak , Taryn Zastrowa , Anthony A. Braga , and Brandon Turchan  

  Can police be trained to treat people in fair and respectful ways, and if so, will this influence evaluations of the police and crime? To answer these questions, we randomly allocated 120 crime hot spots to a procedural justice (PJ) and standard condition (SC) in three cities. Twenty-eight officers were randomly assigned to the conditions. The PJ condition officers received an intensive 5-d training course in the components of PJ (giving voice, showing neutrality, treating people with respect, and evidencing trustworthy motives). We used police self-report surveys to assess whether the training influenced attitudes, systematic social observations to examine impacts on police behavior in the field, and arrests to assess law enforcement actions. We conducted pre and post household surveys to assess resident attitudes toward the police. Impacts on crime were measured using crime incident and citizen-initiated crime call data. The training led to increased knowledge about PJ and more procedurally just behavior in the field as compared with the SC condition. At the same time, PJ officers made many fewer arrests than SC officers. Residents of the PJ hot spots were significantly less likely to perceive police as harassing or using unnecessary force, though we did not find significant differences between the PJ and SC hot spots in perceptions of PJ and police legitimacy. We found a significant relative 14% decline in crime incidents in the PJ hot spots during the experiment.  

Missouri: PNAS, 2022. 6p.

By Jody van der Heyde, Andrew Faull and Martin Sycholt

Trust in the police is vital to a functioning democracy, but relations between South Africa’s residents and police have long been characterised by mistrust. This report introduces procedural justice as a cost-effective, evidence-informed practice that can increase public trust and confidence in the police, and enhance police legitimacy and social cohesion. The report provides an overview of the theory and presents data on trust, customer satisfaction and police morale in South Africa.

South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2023. 16p.