Do you hear what I hear?: A comparison of police officer and civilian fairness judgments through procedural justice

ABSTRACT

Procedural justice theory posits that people care at least as much about how a decision was made as they do about the outcome. Although policymakers and researchers argue that procedural justice-based interventions can improve police-civilian interactions, little research has examined how authorities evaluate decision-making processes. This research examined whether police officers and civilians evaluate fairness in police-civilian encounters through the same mechanisms. 69 police officer and 113 civilian participants, recruited through Qualtrics professional panels and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk respectively, read a vignette describing a police-civilian interaction in which the civilian explained why they violated the law (procedural justice) or were interrupted by the officer (procedural injustice) and made evaluations of the interaction. Multiple-group analyses using bootstrapping revealed that both police officers and civilians rated the procedural justice condition as more fair because they rated the officer as more respectful and trustworthy and because they perceived the civilian had more voice than in the procedural injustice condition. Further, direct and indirect pathways through respect were not present when police officer pathways were allowed to vary, suggesting police may rely on social information differently than civilians.

KEYWORDS:

• Procedural justice
• police
• police-civilian interactions
• structural equation modeling
• voice

Acknowledgements

This project funded in part by the American Psychology and Law Society (APA Div. 41) Grants in aid and the University of Nebraska Warden Fund. The project was completed in partial satisfaction of the first authors Master’s Thesis. Portions of this work have been presented the annual meeting of the American Psychology and Law Society. Thank you to graduate and undergraduate students of the Law and Policy Lab for their hours of work and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data accessibility statement

The relevant, de-identified data that support the findings may be available by contacting the lead author to establish a data share agreement with the oversight of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institutional Review Board. Although this research was not preregistered, the research hypotheses, methodology, and plan for analysis were set out in the lead authors Master’s Thesis proposal and Grant-in-Aid Proposal submitted and approved by the American Psychology and Law Society.

Notes

1 Although general themes of police culture have been identified by research, not all departments are characterized by the same culture or subcultures (Cordner, 2017; Paoline & Gua, 2018; Silver, et al., 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by American Psychology and Law Society (APA Div. 41): [Grant Number N/A].