Race and Perceptions of Police: Experimental Results on the Impact of Procedural (In)Justice

Abstract

Procedural justice theory posits that people will view law and legal institutions as more legitimate and will be more willing to cooperate and comply with these institutions and their agents when treated in a procedurally just manner. While research supports this basic premise, questions remain about the influence of race on this process, especially in the wake of several recent highly publicized and controversial deadly force incidents involving white officers and black suspects. In this study, 546 participants were randomly assigned to view one of six videos depicting a simulated traffic stop. The videos featured three procedural justice conditions (positive, negative, and neutral) and two driver race conditions (white and African American). The findings showed that procedural justice improved encounter-specific assessments of police. Furthermore, black respondents assessed police less favorably than non-black respondents. In addition, the positive effect of procedural justice was larger when the driver was white.

Keywords:

• procedural justice
• police
• race
• experiment
• traffic stops
• attitudes

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Two recent studies have also used experimental or quasi-experimental designs to test the effects of procedural justice training. Both studies concluded that the training generated benefits across several outcome measures (Skogan, Van Craen, & Hennessy, 2015; Wheller, Quinton, Fildes, & Mills, 2013).

² Based on preliminary power analyses, we estimated that, for the main effects in the model, a minimum sample size of 64 would be necessary to detect a large effect (f = .40), 158 to detect a medium-sized effect (f = .25), and 967 to detect a small effect (f = .10). We also determined that an achieved sample size of 450 would enable us to detect a small main effect with power of .590, a medium main effect with power of .982, and a large main effect with power of .999. These estimates suggest that our study is sufficiently powered to detect medium and large main effects but may be underpowered to detect small main effects. The statistical power for testing the two- and three-way interactions is lower.

³ The role of the officer was played by a white male. Because the video was shot from the perspective of a body-worn camera, the officer cannot be seen. However, when the officer is exchanging paperwork with the driver, the officer’s hand can be seen briefly which may have allowed respondents to infer his race. Also, to the extent that race can be inferred from speech patterns, the videos may have provided respondents with cues about his race (Massey & Lundy, 2001; Purnell, Idsardi, & Baugh, 1999). In this case, the officer in the videos spoke with a distinct New England accent. In response to an open-ended question inviting respondents to provide comments, only two made comments about the officer’s race. One noted that the officer was white and another wrote: “I do appreciate that the officer’s race was not disclosed.”

⁴ After consulting previous research that relied on similar methodologies, we designed a custom script for the three procedural justice conditions used in this study (see Lowrey et al., 2016; Mazerolle et al., 2012; Sahin, 2014).

⁵ Manipulation checks conducted for this study (Maguire et al., 2016) and for the previous studies from which our script was partially derived (Lowrey et al., 2016; Mazerolle et al., 2012; Sahin, 2014) confirm that the treatment conditions influenced respondents’ perceptions of procedural justice during the encounter in the expected directions.

⁶ Note that the test of the interaction in Table 4 is based on all three procedural justice conditions whereas the effect size for this interaction is based only on the positive and negative treatment conditions.

⁷ We also ran the analyses with a dummy variable comparing black or Hispanic respondents to all others. The effects sizes were all very similar to those reported here, although one was slightly smaller. In sum, the results were substantively unchanged. To further explore variations by race and ethnicity, we examined the means across the experimental conditions for the following three groups: non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-black Hispanics. Generally, but not always, the Hispanic group mean was between the white and black group means. This is consistent with other research that has found a racial/ethnic gradient in attitudes toward the police and in perceptions of justice (e.g. Gabbidon & Jordan, 2013; Hagan, Shedd, & Payne, 2005; Unah & Wright, 2015; Weitzer & Tuch, 2006). There was no clear pattern in terms of whether Hispanic respondents more closely resembled their white or their black peers. Due to insufficient statistical power, a more formal test of these patterns would not be meaningful.

⁸ Previous field experiments have compared positive (procedurally just) treatment to neutral or “business as usual” treatment (MacQueen & Bradford, 2015; Mazerolle et al., 2012; Mazerolle, Antrobus et al., 2013; Sahin, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Devon Johnson

Devon Johnson is an associate professor of criminology, law, and society at George Mason University. Her recent research examines public opinion on crime policy and perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy in the United States and the Caribbean. She is coeditor of the volume Deadly Injustice: Trayvon Martin, Race, and the Criminal Justice System.

David B. Wilson

David B. Wilson is a professor of criminology, law, and society at George Mason University. His research interests focus on the effectiveness of juvenile and offender rehabilitation and crime prevention efforts, program evaluation methodology, and meta-analysis.

Edward R. Maguire

Edward R. Maguire is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and an associate director in the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety at Arizona State University. His research interests focus on policing, violent crime, procedural justice and legitimacy, and research methodology.

Belén V. Lowrey-Kinberg

Belén V. Lowrey-Kinberg is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis College. She received her PhD from the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University in Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on the application of linguistics to the criminal justice system, including procedural justice, police–citizen interactions, and wrongful convictions.