Ben Bradford, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford

Encouraging public cooperation with the police: procedural justice and the (re)production of social identity

Ben Bradford, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford

Tina Murphy, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University

Jon Jackson, Methodology Department, London School of Economics

Extended Abstract

What do people want from their interactions with legal authorities? Are they most interested in material or other outcomes – do they have a primarily instrumental relationship with the authority – or are they concerned more with the quality of the interaction itself and, in particular, with the fairness with which the process is enacted? A growing body of international work, primarily inspired by Tom Tyler’s procedural justice model (Tyler 2006) suggests that it is the procedural fairness of interactions with authorities such as police officers that is most important to those who, for whatever reason, have contact with those authorities. Moreover, the experience of procedural fairness is linked with trust in the authority concerned, decision acceptance, legitimacy, and willingness to cooperate in the future.

Procedural justice in criminal justice contexts refers to impartial service to the law, as well as fair, respectful and even-handed wielding of power. While fairness is an important aspect of the behaviour of any criminal justice agency, in this paper we limit the discussion to the activity of the police, the most visible and accessible face not only of the criminal justice system but also, arguably, of the state itself. We concentrate primarily on one of the central concerns of procedural justice theory, that is, the extent to which police behaviour influences the social identity of people who interact with officers. In essence, the argument is that procedurally fair policing, marked and demonstrated by neutrality and transparency, by fair, equitable and respectful treatment, and by a feeling of control (or ‘voice’) on behalf of the citizen, encourages the idea that the individual and the police are ‘on the same side’. The sense of shared group membership that procedural justice encourages (or which procedural injustice inhibits) has important implications in terms of trust, legitimacy and cooperation.

Criminology appears to have recently ‘re-discovered’ social identity as a key aspect of the field. Approaches as varied as McAra and McVie’s (2012) negotiated order theory, Bosworth and colleague’s accounts of the identity formation and negation in the globalized prison and immigration detention complex (e.g. Bosworth and Kaufman 2011), and studies of the English riots of 2011 (Newburn et al. 2012) have all considered in one way or another the relationship between inclusion and social belonging, crime and the role of the criminal justice system as an engine of identity production. Such an emphasis has, of course, a long pedigree in criminology, stretching right back to anomie, sub-cultural theory and symbolic interactionism: the recent de-discovery, if that is what it is, builds on both tradition and a continuous trajectory of work stretching over 70 years. Arguably novel at the current time, however, is the extent of the attention directed toward the influence criminal justice agencies may exert on people’s social and cultural, as well as legal, identities. Identity-shaping criminal justice processes have been linked with breakdowns in relations between the public and justice agencies and subsequent challenges to the criminal justice system, and to the possibility that the system can promote, through its actions, actively criminogenic social formations.

This ‘re-discovery’ resonates with, and indeed as been partly influence by, Tyler’s work on procedural justice. Crucially, social identity provides a key causal mechanism in the processes that lead from perceptions of police fairness, to trust, legitimacy, cooperation and, indeed, compliance with the laws the police represent and enforce. Numerous studies show how the exercise of authority via the application of fair process strengthens the social bonds between individuals and authorities that govern them (Tyler and Huo, 2002; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003a; Tyler, 2011). Individuals establish connections even in groups with only tenuous bases for group identification (Lind and Tyler, 1988; Tyler and Lind, 1992; Tajfel and Turner, 1986); they are sensitive to signs and symbols that communicate information about their status and position within a group (de Cremer and Tyler, 2005); and how authorities such as the police treat them communicates their status within the group those authorities represent (Tyler and Blader, 2003). In the context of policing this social group has been jointly and variously characterized as the nation, state or community (Jackson and Bradford 2009; Loader and Mulcahy 2003; Reiner 2000; Waddington 1999). The key claim here is, then, that the strength of people’s identification with these groups is shaped, at least in part and in certain contexts, by the quality of their interactions with police officers.

The experience of procedural justice or injustice communicates status within the group, and of particular relevance in this context is the idea that procedural injustice can communicate stigmatization by authorities (Tyler and Wakslak, 2004). If people perceive that the way police officers treat them is based not on what they are doing, but on their race, gender, or age, such behaviour carries negative identity implications, raising critical questions about whether those on the receiving end are accorded rights pertaining to membership of the superordinate group (or the rights accorded to group members in good standing).

The procedural justice model has, therefore, developed a robust theoretical framework for understanding (a) what, precisely, it is about the behaviour of criminal justice actors and organizations that might influence the social identities of those subject to their authority and (b) the implications arising from the identity shaping aspects of criminal justice processes. Research has suggested: that the police represent, symbolically and indeed practically, the dominant social group or order; that officer’s behaviour in relation to individuals and subordinate groups is imbued with identity relevant meaning; that such meaning is transmitted primarily via the procedural fairness (or otherwise) of police activity; that procedural fairness encourages people to feel included and valued within the group the police represent; and that this inclusion is associated with trust in the police, the extent to which people grant it legitimacy, and their willingness to cooperate with officers, defer to police authority, and comply with the law (Bradford 2013; Jackson et al. 2012; Sunshine and Tyler 2003a, 2003b; Tyler 2006; Tyler and Huo 2002).

A key underlying assumption of all the research described above is that the behaviour of criminal justice agencies has a causal effect on identity. With regard to legal/bureaucratic identities this seems almost self-evident. The actions (or omissions) of police officers assign people to different administrative or legal categories (Ericson and Haggerty 1997), a process that can have significant effects on their lives. What is less clear is the extent to which criminal justice organizations exert pressure on people’s cultural and social identities, which are by definition subject to a much wider range of influences and which seem likely to pre-date experiences of the behaviour of police officers and other criminal justice agents. Yet, it is precisely these subjective identities that provide a key aspect of the putative causal process linking procedural fairness to legitimacy and cooperation. Yet, outside a few foundational studies (e.g. Tyler and Huo 2002) work on procedural justice and social identity in criminal justice contexts has been constrained by the use of cross-sectional data, making it impossible to disentangle, or even firmly identify, causal processes linking the activity of criminal justice agencies and social identity. Does police activity really shape people’s identities? Absent such a process a key causal mechanism of the procedural justice model falls.

In the current paper we use panel data from a representative sample survey of Australians to explore the associations between procedural justice, social identity, and people’s willingness to cooperate with the police. While we are unable, with such data, to demonstrate causality, we are able unravel a convincing set of associations that link change in judgements about the procedural fairness of the police with change in relevant social identities. Our findings suggest that procedural justice is linked to police legitimacy partly directly and partly via the intervening mechanism of social identity, and that the association between procedural justice and propensity to cooperate with the police is partly mediated by legitimacy and partly by social identity.

These findings are important for a number of reasons. Building on other recent studies (e.g. Bradford 2012), they provide what is to our knowledge the most robust empirical evidence to date that the procedural justice of police activity does indeed shape people’s identities in relation to social groups the police represent. Equally, however, they open up avenues for further exploration of the role the criminal justice system can play in shaping the subjective social identities of people who come into contact with it and, consequently, their readiness to cooperate with the those agencies and their willingness to engage in other kinds of ‘pro-social’ activity. Such possibilities have many positive implications; conversely, our findings underline the potential for police and other criminal justice agents to act in ways that undermine people’s social identities and damage their propensity to cooperate within and on behalf of the group those agents represent. As ever, we are left with the idea that the fairness of police activity is of central concern.

References

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