Policing, Procedural Fairness and Public Behaviour: A Review and Critique
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijps.2009.11.1.105 |
| Author | Justice Tankebe |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Policing, procedural fairness and public
behaviour: a review and critique
Justice Tankebe
Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, CB3 9DT, United
Kingdom. Email: jt340@cam.ac.uk
Received 25 September 2007; accepted 22 May 2008
Keywords: procedural fairness, legitimacy, compliance, outcome fairness
Justice Tankebe
is a Research Fellow at the
Cambridge Institute of Criminology (UK), where
he recently receive his PhD.
A
BSTRACT
This paper provides a brief review and critique of
the procedural fairness conception of police legit-
imacy. It is argued that the theoretical framework
is too limited to constitute the basis for any
overall legitimacy-based model of policing.
Rather, its potential stands to be greatly enhanced
if it incorporates other crucial variables such as the
role of police self-legitimating activities in shaping
police treatment of the public, and the contexts in
which procedural fairness and outcome issues are
singularly or collectively influential. It is also
argued that, while it is well and good if proced-
ural fairness enhances the quality of public com-
pliance and cooperation with the police, it is
unhealthy if procedural fairness is taken seriously
only for its utilitarian value. Procedural fairness,
and by extension police legitimacy, must be
pursued as something of intrinsic value, a good in
and of itself; treating people fairly should not be
an issue of choice contingent simply on demon-
strable evidence of the facilitation of the task of
the police in maintaining order.
INTRODUCTION
In the last two decades, criminology has
witnessed a growing interest in issues of
procedural fairness in particular and legit-
imacy more generally. Procedural fairness
theorists, mainly through the work of Tyler
(2003, p. 286), maintain that ‘views about
legitimacy are rooted in the judgment that
the police and the courts are acting fairly
when they deal with community residents’.
Positive public evaluations of procedural
fairness, it is said, translate into both imme-
diate and long-term public willingness to
accept constraints of the law and to cooper-
ate with legal authorities (Tyler, 2003;
Paternoster, Brame, Bachman, & Sherman,
1997). Of course, procedural fairness is by
no means a new terrain for researchers. Thi-
baut and Walker’s (1975) empirical demon-
stration of the influence of differential
perceptions of procedural justice on satisfac-
tion with judicial decisions remains the locus
classicus in the field. Its current stature is
however to be credited to the work of Tyler
(1989, 1990a, 1990b) and other researchers.
In this article, I seek to interrogate both
the theoretical arguments and the empirical
evidence which link procedural fairness to
police legitimacy and to public law-abiding
behaviour.
REVIEW OF THE PROCEDURAL
FAIRNESS ARGUMENTS
Tyler’s (1990a, 1990b) conception of pro-
cedural fairness, which stresses the non-
instrumental aspects of procedural fairness,
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 11 No. 1, 2009, pp. 8–19.
DOI: 10.1350/ijps.2009.11.1.105
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 11 Number 1
Page 8
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