Why do ‘the law’ comply? Procedural justice, group identification and officer motivation in police organizations
| Author | Paul Quinton,Gillian Porter,Ben Bradford,Andy Myhill |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370813491898 |
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
2014, Vol 11(1) 110 –131
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370813491898
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Why do ‘the law’ comply?
Procedural justice, group
identification and officer
motivation in police
organizations
Ben Bradford
University of Oxford, UK
Paul Quinton
College of Policing, UK
Andy Myhill
College of Policing, UK
Gillian Porter
Durham Constabulary, UK
Abstract
How can police officers be encouraged to commit to changing organizational and personal
practice? In this paper we test organizational justice theories that suggest that fair processes and
procedures enhance rule compliance and commitment to the organization and its goals. We pay
particular attention to (a) tensions between the role of group identity in organizational justice
models and classic concerns about ‘cop culture’; and (b) the danger of over-identification with the
organization and the counterproductive types of compliance this may engender. Results suggest
that organizational justice enhances identification with the police organization, encourages
officers to take on new roles, increases positive views of community policing, and is associated
with greater self-reported compliance. Identification with the organization has generally positive
implications; however, there is some danger that process fairness may encourage unthinking
compliance with orders and instructions.
Keywords
Cooperation and compliance, organizational justice, police organizations, procedural justice
Corresponding author:
Ben Bradford, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford,
OX1 4NH, UK.
Email: ben.bradford@crim.ox.ac.uk
491898EUC11110.1177/1477370813491898European Journal of CriminologyBradford et al.
2013
Article
Bradford et al. 111
Developing and maintaining the commitment of police officers to changing organiza-
tional and personal practice is a perennial problem for police managers and is a mainstay
of policing research. In England and Wales, the last two decades have seen a range of
policing policies – neighbourhood policing, problem-oriented policing, the ‘confidence
agenda’ (Stanko et al., 2012) – come and sometimes go. Although these policies have
often involved major organizational change, the extent to which they have resulted in a
wholesale shift in practice on the ground is often moot (Foster and Jones, 2010; Skogan,
2008). Yet the changing dynamics of police/public relations and the advent of new poli-
cies and technologies, on the one hand, and organizational attempts to adapt to and influ-
ence these dynamics, on the other, are often debated and discussed in ways that pay scant
attention to the relationship between the practice of individual officers and the behaviour
of the police organization more widely (for an exception see Chan et al., 2003). How can
police officers be encouraged to alter their behaviour, and what institutional configura-
tions might promote, or inhibit, change?
The unique nature of ‘police culture’ is often cited as a key barrier to implementing
change programmes, refocusing officers’ activities and enhancing ‘professionalization’
(Foster, 2003; Skogan, 2008; Stanko et al., 2012). On these accounts, police cultures are
marked by suspicion, internal solidarity, pragmatism and conservatism. Police officers
have an action-oriented sense of mission coupled with a widespread cynicism and pes-
simism that may clash with some of the more service-oriented goals of modern policing
(Loftus, 2010; Reiner, 2010). Furthermore, officer discretion increases as one moves
from the top to the bottom of the organization, and ‘street-level cops’ are generally oper-
ating away from supervisory control (Goldstein, 1960). Together, these factors present a
significant problem for those seeking to alter operational practice (Mastrofski, 2004).
Moves towards service-based policing models, in particular, may encounter resistance,
as those officers who see themselves primarily as thief-takers (Reiner, 2010) subvert or
simply ignore efforts to refocus their activities and develop more sustainable relation-
ships with the communities they serve (Loftus, 2010).
A considerable literature has built up around the issue of how and why police officers
treat members of the public the way they do, the extent to which they ‘buy into’ new poli-
cies and practices, and the problems inherent in generating officer compliance in the face
of the extent of their discretion. Studies have found, for example, that demographic (both
officer and citizen) variables affect the ways in which officers react to members of the
public (Mastrofski et al., 2000; Rabe-Hemp, 2008; Sun et al., 2008), and that a proclivity
towards community policing increases the chance that officers will react to service-
related requests (Rossler and Terrill, 2012; Myhill and Bradford, 2013). Yet the relation-
ship between individual officers and the police organization is, as noted, often absent
from such studies, as is consideration of the ways in which organizational structures or
policies might encourage behaviour change. Given the centrality of the police organiza-
tion within the wider policing literature, this lack of attention is somewhat surprising,
and there are, of course, some exceptions. Gau and Gaines (2012), for example, found
that variables related to attachment to supervisors and the quality of organizational deci-
sion-making and communication were associated with attitudes towards non-traditional
practices such as order-maintenance policing. Similarly, using data from a UK police
force, Myhill and Bradford (2013) reported that perceptions of organizational justice
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