Justice-involved males’ procedural justice perceptions of the police and courts: examining the spill-over effect

ABSTRACT

Prior research has demonstrated the importance of the process-based model for effective police-citizen encounters and court procedures. Despite considerable research into procedural justice, there is a dearth of research examining high-risk populations. In particular, with few exceptions, research examining perceptions of procedural justice among serious justice-involved males has been nearly absent from the literature. In addition, few studies have explored the interrelationship of individuals’ procedural justice perceptions of the police and courts. Using data collected from a sample of incarcerated males this study explores the relationship between justice-involved males’ procedural justice perceptions of the police and their procedural justice perceptions of the courts. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Procedural justice
• spill-over
• police
• courts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While it would have been more accurate to measure age as a continuous variable, the institutional review board felt that an exact age combined with the race/ethnicity of respondents may have allowed for the identification of individual respondents. So in order to protect respondents and ensure anonymity, age was instead measured ordinally.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucas M. Alward

Lucas M. Alward is a doctoral candidate in the department of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida. His research interests include community corrections, institutional corrections, and procedural justice.

Thomas Baker

Thomas Baker is an associate professor in the department of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida. His research interests include corrections, attitudes about punishment, and life-course criminology.