Police Contact with Young People with Cognitive Disabilities: Perceptions of Procedural (In)justice
| Author | Kathy Ellem,Kelly Richards |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225418794357 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
794357YJJ0010.1177/1473225418794357Youth JusticeEllem and Richards
research-article2018
Original Article
Youth Justice
2018, Vol. 18(3) 230 –247
Police Contact with Young
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225418794357
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Perceptions of Procedural
(In)justice
Kathy Ellem and Kelly Richards
Abstract
The interactions of police with young people with cognitive disabilities (YPWCD) have seldom been
considered in research, even though this group is over-represented in the criminal justice system. This
article presents the results of a qualitative study into YPWCD’s experiences with police in Queensland,
Australia. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with service providers who work with YPWCD
and YPWCD themselves. The procedural justice perspective was used as an analytic framework to provide
an insight into YPWCD’s relationships with the police. Findings point to ways in which police can better
respond to YPWCD in procedurally just ways, as well as to the role that family and service providers might
play in supporting this outcome.
Keywords
cognitive disability, police, procedural justice, young offenders
Introduction
Interaction with the police is often the first key element in the path of criminal justice
encounters (Baker et al., 2014). Perceptions of police legitimacy among youth have war-
ranted recent attention in the literature (e.g. Sindall et al., 2017). This is an important area
of research because of the extensive contact young people have with the police (Murphy,
2015), the largely unsupervised nature of this contact (Cunneen et al., 2015) and the dis-
cretionary powers the police can exercise with youth (Schulenberg and Warren, 2009).
According to Hinds (2009), negative experiences with the police may have a lasting influ-
ence on youth attitudes and behaviours towards authority, and may in turn act as a disin-
centive to cooperation and to reporting acts of victimisation. While the research interest is
Corresponding author:
Kathy Ellem, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, The University
of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: k.ellem@uq.edu.au
Ellem and Richards
231
growing regarding young people and the police, there is still much to be learned about
specific groups of young people and their police interactions.
Young People with Cognitive Disability and the Police
The experiences of young people with cognitive disabilities (YPWCD) with the police are
one area that warrants further research attention. Cognitive disability in this article refers
to a number of conditions in which a young person has ongoing challenges in intellectual
functioning (including reasoning, problem solving and learning) and in adaptive skills
(i.e. everyday social and practical abilities; Schalock et al., 2010). The term refers to intel-
lectual impairment (particularly in the borderline, mild and moderate range; World Health
Organization, 2017), autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Crane et al., 2016) and acquired
brain injury (including foetal alcohol spectrum disorder; Gralton, 2014). The causal nature
of cognitive difficulties may be unclear, and for many young people there may be co-
occurring mental illness, which can further complicate diagnosis (Baldry et al., 2013).
Studies in Australia and elsewhere suggest that YPWCD are over-represented within
the criminal justice system. In Australia, YPWCD, particularly Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander young people (Baldry et al., 2016) have been shown to have disproportion-
ate levels of contact with the criminal justice system. According to the Australian Bureau
of Statistics (2014), approximately 4 per cent of young men and 3 per cent of young
women have an intellectual disability in Australia. In contrast, it was found that 14 per
cent of young people had an intellectual disability in a custody health survey conducted in
New South Wales (Indig et al., 2011). These figures would indicate that YPWCD are
likely to have frequent contact with the police.
Many YPWCD in contact with the criminal justice system have a history of social dis-
advantage and exhibit behavioural responses deemed ‘too difficult’ for disability services
(Ellem et al., in press). Compared with their same-aged peers, YPWCD are more likely to
have poor health (Allerton et al., 2011), are at greater risk of poverty (Emerson and
Spencer, 2015), are subject to greater stigmatisation and violence (Larkin et al., 2012) and
are more likely to have poor educational and future employment outcomes (Young-
Southward et al., 2016). Their lives may be further complicated by mental illness, prob-
lematic substance and alcohol use and, in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
young people, entrenched racism and discrimination (Baldry et al., 2016). Subsequently,
YPWCD occupy an especially marginal position in their communities due to their multi-
ple subordinate identities (Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008).
YPWCD may also have some behavioural characteristics associated with their impair-
ment that lead to increased attention by the police. They may be socially naïve and there-
fore easily manipulated by others, have difficulty responding to changes in routine
(particularly if the young person has some autistic traits), struggle with emotional regula-
tion and moral reasoning and have poor insight into the implications of their behaviour
(King and Murphy, 2014). The presence of psychiatric comorbidity and problematic sub-
stance use can compound these issues (Baldry et al., 2016).
When a YPWCD comes into contact with the police, communication difficulties can
arise. They may have difficulty understanding events and have a limited knowledge of
232
Youth Justice 18(3)
legal rights (Brown et al., 2016). YPWCD may be more likely to confess, acquiesce to
police demands and fail to accurately recall important information (Bowles and Sharman,
2014). In addition, the young person may not disclose their disability to the police in order
to avoid any stigmatising consequences (Scior et al., 2013).
In most jurisdictions in Australia, police are legally required to adapt procedures and
protocols to accommodate individuals with impaired cognitive capacity. This can include
adapting communication styles and obtaining the assistance of an independent person, as
specified in the Queensland Police Service (QPS) Operational Procedures Manual
(2017a). The literature however, points to several barriers to effective police responses to
YPWCD. These include little or no training regarding recognising and responding to peo-
ple with a disability (Mogavero, 2016), failure to follow best-practice communication
guidelines when interviewing YPWCD (Agnew et al., 2006) and ‘hypersurveillance’ of
young people who have a long history of offending (particularly Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander YPWD in the Australian context; MacGillivray and Baldry, 2013). Police
culture and attitudes may also influence outcomes for YPWCD (Paoline and Gau, 2017).
While some authors have noted police officers’ concerns for the vulnerability of people
with cognitive disability (Parsons and Sherwood, 2016), Hellenbach’s (2012) research
found that some police officers regarded cognitive disability to be an illegitimate mitiga-
tion of an offender’s wrong-doing. In a study by Douglas and Cuskelly (2012), some
police officers did not regard it as their responsibility to identify a person with cognitive
disability, stating that this was a matter for the courts. How these issues affect the percep-
tions of police by YPWCD and those that support them has not been adequately explored
in the literature. In the section that follows, an overview of the procedural justice perspec-
tive is provided as an analytical framework for understanding the relationship between
YPWCD and the police.
Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy
A large body of criminological literature has found that an individual’s evaluation of legal
authorities has bearing on the confidence and compliance with the law among offenders
and non-offenders (see Mazerolle et al., 2013 for a review). The procedural justice per-
spective pays particular attention to procedural factors in police decision-making and their
interpersonal responses to citizens and how this in turn may lead to more cooperative
behaviour with authorities (Tyler et al., 2015). This perspective argues that if people view
that they have been treated fairly by the police, this in turn can foster a belief in the legiti-
macy of law enforcement, and lead people to internalise a moral obligation to obey the
law (Gau and Brunson, 2010). The procedural justice perspective has influenced police
practice in many contexts, as evidenced in the QPS (2017b) Strategic Plan 2017–2021
that regards positive public perception of police as a performance indicator.
Tyler et al. (2015) proposed that perceptions of procedural justice are based on four
relational criteria or antecedents of procedural justice: citizen participation, being treated
with dignity and respect, neutrality and fairness in decision-making and trustworthiness
of authorities.
Ellem and Richards
233
Citizen participation in decision-making has been shown to have a positive influence
on people’s perceptions of procedural justice (Tyler et al.,...
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