Title: Procedural Justice | National Initiative
Headings: Procedural Justice
Procedural Justice
Research

Content: 2) the community feels obligated to follow the law and the dictates of legal authorities, and 3) the community feels that it shares a common set of interests and values with the police. Procedurally just policing is essential to the development of good will between police and communities and is closely linked to improving community perceptions of police legitimacy, the belief that authorities have the right to dictate proper behavior. Research shows that when communities view police authority as legitimate, they are more likely to cooperate with police and obey the law. Establishing and maintaining police legitimacy promotes the acceptance of police decisions, correlates with high levels of law abidingness, and makes it more likely that police and communities will collaborate to combat crime. A key component of the research is that the public is especially concerned that the conduct of authorities be fair, and this factor matters more to them than whether outcomes of particular interactions favor them. This means that procedurally just policing is not consonant with traditional enforcement-focused policing, which typically assumes compliance is a function primarily of emphasizing to the public the consequences—usually formal punishment—of failing to follow the law. Policing based on formal deterrence encourages the public’s association of policing primarily with enforcement and punitive outcomes. Procedurally just policing, on the other hand, emphasizes values that police and communities share—shared values based upon a common conception of what social order is and how it should be maintained—and encourages the collaborative, voluntary maintenance of a law-abiding community. Research indicates that this latter approach is far more effective at producing law-abiding citizens than the former. This makes intuitive sense— people welcome being treated as equals with a stake in keeping their communities safe, as opposed to being treated as subjects of a capricious justice system enforced by police who punish them for ambiguous, if not arbitrary, reasons.