Legitimacy invariance and campus crime: the impact of campus police legitimacy in different reporting contexts

ABSTRACT

This paper examines whether campus police legitimacy relevance varies across different crime contexts. 519 respondents from 31 undergraduate sections at a public university rated campus police legitimacy as well as their willingness to report a campus crime to the public safety department. Students were assigned to different crime vignettes, involving experimental manipulation of crime type: petty theft, indecent exposure, aggravated assault, and gun possession on a college campus. Results indicate general support for the procedural justice model, specifically the invariance of the influence of legitimacy on reporting. This paper argues for increased specificity in measurement of cooperation beyond general willingness to assist, or a single crime context.

KEYWORDS:

• Campus police
• legitimacy
• invariance
• cooperation
• procedural justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael F. Aiello

Michael F. Aiello is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociocultural and Justice Sciences at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He received his PhD in Criminal Justice from the Graduate Center, CUNY, housed at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. His research interests include procedural justice, police social networking, gender in policing, vigilantism, and bystander intervention. His work has been published in Crime, Media, Culture, Deviant Behavior, Journal of School Violence, Policing: An International Journal, and The PoliceJournal: Theory, Practice and Principles.