American Policing at a Crossroads: Unsustainable Policies and The Procedural Justice Alternative
American Policing at a Crossroads: Unsustainable Policies and The Procedural Justice Alternative
Article Type: Perspectives on policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 35, Issue 3.
Stephen J. Schulhofer, Tom R. Tyler and Aziz Z. HuqThe Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology2011Vol. 101pp. 335-374
This paper argues that the current order maintenance and zero-tolerance policing strategies used in departments throughout the USA are counterproductive and poorly utilize resources. Instead the paper suggests that police departments in the USA need to shift toward a model of policing that is based on the concept of procedurally just practices that are designed to elevate the legitimacy of the police and the law. The authors argue that increased legitimacy will reduce the necessity for policing by not only altering their individual behavior, but also reinforce measures of informal social control within neighborhoods. This informal social control has been long believed to be the key for successfully addressing crime.
Although the piece is purely conceptual, it rests on a large body of work in psychology and law and society. The authors highlight that legitimacy has long been the goal of law enforcement agencies in the USA in each era of policing;however, these conceptualizations of legitimacy were incomplete. Instead the authors state that the legitimacy that police departments should be working toward is based on the psychological attribute of legitimacy. This attribute of legitimacy states that regardless of potential consequences or rewards, people will obey the law when they see the government as deserving trust and respect. The perceptions of legitimacy are often a direct by-product of procedurally just encounters with the authority. Procedurally just encounters are those where the rules are evenly applied to all, and the person is treated fairly and with dignity during encounters with authority figures. The authors highlight that procedurally just treatment does not imply going easy on potential offenders;rather research suggests people are happy with a less-favorable outcome in an encounter with a police officer if they were treated fairly and with respect during the encounter.
The full theoretical model that is presented in the paper is specifically designed to address the endogenous nature of the relationship between the police and the fight against crime. The authors acknowledge the growing body of research which suggests a tenuous relationship between the police and members of racial and ethnic minority groups, and suggest much of this tension stems from perceptions of unfair treatment of minorities during encounters with the police. Negative encounters with the police cause the deterioration of minority group members’ perceptions of the law and the police; resulting in additional or more aggressive police attention.
The authors contend that this behavior can be reversed by making two policy changes within police departments. The first change is convincing law enforcement executives to begin espousing views of enhancing procedurally just treatment in all encounters and the building of perceptions of legitimacy. The second change, which will help reinforce the first, revolves around changing the structure of recognition and reward systems within police departments. Departments need to change the evaluation criteria to not only include procedurally just treatment, but also to make it as important as making arrests and writing citations. Additionally, officers’ good work should be reinforced by supervisors on a more frequent basis. Lastly, officers should be given a voice in designing the performance evaluation system and establishing the rules for both internal and external disciplinary procedures. These changes would reinforce the concept of fairness both within the organization and encounters with citizens.
