The social psychological processes of ‘procedural justice’: Concepts, critiques and opportunities
| Author | Matthew Radburn,Clifford Stott |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895818780200 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818780200
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2019, Vol. 19(4) 421 –438
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895818780200
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The social psychological
processes of ‘procedural
justice’: Concepts, critiques
and opportunities
Matthew Radburn
College of Policing, UK
Clifford Stott
Keele University, Staffordshire, UK
Abstract
Contemporary research on policing and procedural justice theory (PJT) emphasizes large-scale
survey data to link a series of interlocking concepts, namely perceptions of procedural fairness,
police legitimacy and normative compliance. In this article we contend that as such, contemporary
research is in danger of conveying a misreading of PJT by portraying a reified social world
divorced from the social psychological dynamics of encounters between the police and policed.
In this article we set out a rationale for addressing this potential misreading and explore how
and why PJT researchers would benefit both theoretically and methodologically through drawing
upon advances in theoretical accounts of social identity, developed most notably in attempts to
understand crowd action. Specifically, we advance an articulation of a ‘process-based’ model of
PJT’s underlying social and subjective dynamics and stress the value of ethnographic approaches
for studying police–‘citizen’ encounters.
Keywords
Crowds, police legitimacy, policing, procedural justice, social identity
Introduction
This article sets out an argument about how procedural justice theory can be advanced
both theoretically and empirically. We begin by exploring conceptual origins in order to
Corresponding author:
Matthew Radburn, College of Policing, Leamington Rd, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry, CV8 3EN, UK.
Email: matthew.radburn@college.pnn.police.uk
780200CRJ0010.1177/1748895818780200Criminology & Criminal JusticeRadburn and Stott
research-article2018
Article
422 Criminology & Criminal Justice 19(4)
demonstrate how early work in the field acknowledged the importance of power rela-
tions, group identity and the situational and cultural contingency of fairness ‘rules’. We
move on to explore the extension of procedural justice ideas into the realm of policing,
pointing out the turn away from understanding the nature and context of situationally
embedded interactions with police towards a focus on using surveys to measure cogni-
tions and generalized experiences of encounters with police across populations. Our
argument then explores how the field has dealt with the concept of social identity, argu-
ing that the dominant theoretical models convey a very specific and we argue rather
limited set of propositions about underlying social psychological dynamics, the range of
social categories at work and how encounters with the police relate to these. Drawing
upon research and theory in crowd psychology we highlight the importance of historical
group level dynamics within specific encounters with police and how these can function
to shape identity, perceptions of procedural fairness, police legitimacy and self-regula-
tion. We conclude by putting forward a series of propositions about how procedural
justice theory can be developed through fuller recognition of the dialogic nature of
encounters with police. In particular, we propose the value of incorporating an ‘elabo-
rated’ or context-oriented model of underlying social psychology and in making a (re)
turn towards ethnographic observation as a means of studying the complexity and ongo-
ing nature of interactions with the police.
The Conceptual Origins of Procedural Justice
Power and ‘procedure’
It is Thibaut and Walker (1975, 1978) who are largely credited with the creation of the
now highly influential concept of ‘procedural justice’.1 Their seminal work demonstrated
that criminal justice procedures which afforded disputants the opportunity to have ‘voice’
within the legal system were perceived as more ‘procedurally fair’ than were those that
denied disputants this opportunity (Lind et al., 1997). This preference was maintained
even in instances where ‘decision control’ was in the hands of a third party. Thibaut and
Walker (1978) argue this motivation for ‘voice’ is a form of process control, based in a
desire the disputants possess to shape the consequences of those criminal justice ‘proce-
dures’. Thus, they ultimately imply that individuals value process control because they
are embedded in a power relationship and ‘voice’ allows some opportunity to shape the
outcomes that they receive.
Leventhal’s (1980) justice judgement model (JJM) similarly emphasizes that indi-
viduals value process control. Leventhal (1980) advanced six rules that he argued indi-
viduals use to judge procedural fairness. These are the extent to which a procedure: (1)
is applied consistently across people and time (the consistency rule); (2) it is not unduly
influenced by personal self-interest (bias suppression rule); (3) it is based on as much
accurate and informed information as possible (accuracy rule); (4) there is the opportu-
nity to change or overturn incorrect decisions (the ‘correctability’ rule); (5) it reflects the
views and concerns of all subgroups and individuals affected (representativeness); and
(6) the procedure is concordant with an individual’s moral and ethical values (ethicality
rule). An important point to take from Leventhal’s (1980: 32) conceptual development is
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