Rethinking police procedural justice
| Author | Dorian Schaap,Elsa Saarikkomäki |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211056680 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Rethinking police procedural
justice
Dorian Schaap
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Elsa Saarikkomäki
University of Turku, Finland
Abstract
While procedural justice theory has become the dominant paradigm in thinking about
police legitimacy, it has several important weaknesses. First, procedural justice’s concep-
tually essential distinction between ‘process’and ‘outcome’is blurred in reality, which is
visible both in empirical operationalizations and in researchers’understanding of police
work. Second, procedural justice theory views society through an implicit consensus
lens, making it poorly equipped to address police–citizen conflicts and structural societal
inequalities. This is evident in the theory’s inability to unpack the dynamics of police–citi-
zen interactions and its reluctance to problematize the police role in contemporary
plural societies. To advance our understanding of police legitimacy and police–citizen
relations, particularly among marginalized groups, we strongly recommend working
toward theoretical renewal and empirical diversification.
Keywords
legitimacy, police, police–citizen relations, procedural justice, trust
Introduction
Recently, we have witnessed various waves of urban unrest centered around cases of
police violence against members of ethnic minorities. In the United States, pivotal
Corresponding author:
Dorian Schaap, Public Administration, Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University Nijmegen,
The Netherlands.
Email: dorian.schaap@ru.nl
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2022, Vol. 26(3) 416–433
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806211056680
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moments were the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and the
killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. While particularly salient in the USA,
clashes, protests and confrontations between the police and the public have recurred in
different shapes and with different backgrounds in many other western countries over
the past decade. In most of these cases, the tensions have had distinct ethnic dimensions
and are strongly connected to society-wide debates surrounding discrimination and struc-
tural inequality.
These events have given rise to new efforts to improve police legitimacy and public
trust in the police (Bayley, 2018; Saarikkomäki et al., 2021; Worden and McLean,
2017). However, the question of how to improve the relationship between the police
and the public has occupied scholars, policy makers and police chiefs for many
decades (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012; Bowling et al., 2019; Schaap, 2021). Answers
to this question differ and evolve: changes are clearly visible in the shifting popularity
of different types of police trust-building strategies (Goldsmith, 2005). Although differ-
ent strategies can coexist or recur several times, we have seen several phases in many
countries (Schaap, 2018). First, a focus on increasing police professionalism and redu-
cing political or other undue influences on police work. Second, a growing popularity
of forms of proximity policing, such as community policing or neighborhood policing
(Stone and Travis, 2011). Third, instrumental, effectiveness and efficiency-oriented
approaches, emphasizing police service delivery in terms of crime fighting and rapid
response (Schaap, 2018).
At present, a fourth wave of police trust-building strategies is in vogue, fundamentally
different from (although not necessarily incompatible with) previous schools of thought
(Tyler et al., 2015). This new wave, especially salient in the USA, is partially a sign of the
times. There, the police have in recent years been facing a crisis that is
Not about corruption, political influence, or miscarriages of law. It is not about the effectiveness
of the strategies they employ to control crime. It is about the way in which individual police
officers deal with the people they encounter daily in the course of their work.
(Bayley, 2018: 125)
The problem with police–public relationships in contemporary US policing is, by this
definition, primarily found in individual interactions between police officers and citizens.
Here, a specific theoretical perspective becomes especially attractive: procedural justice
theory. Hence, during the protests following the death of George Floyd in June 2020,
calls were made again to implement procedurally just policing to help defuse tensions
between the police and large segments of the US population (Stone, 2020).
Procedural justice is currently a dominant police trust-building paradigm not just in the
USA (Tyler et al., 2015), but across the globe; research is growing rapidly (e.g. Bradford
and Jackson, 2016; Oberwittler and Roché, 2018; Wood et al., 2020). The core idea of the
theory, supported in these empirical studies, is that citizens’perceptions of legal author-
ities treating them fairly and in a procedurally just manner are the primary influence on
how these authorities are experienced as legitimate and trustworthy. People can accept
even unfavorable police decisions if the process to reach them is perceived to be fair,
Schaap and Saarikkomäki 417
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