CJPS3

Editorial

‘The Public gets what the Public wants?’
Interrogating the ‘Public Confidence’
Agenda
Jenny Fleming* and Eugene McLaughlin

We do not need to remind readers of this journal
that the police are the most visible domestic agents
of coercive governmental authority in advanced
liberal democracies. What the public thinks, feels,
and says about the police and the stance of citizens
toward the police can, in many respects, stand as a
key indicator of confidence in the state’s ability to
fulfil its side of the social contract. And of course
levels of public confidence in the police have
knock-on effects for every part of the criminal jus-
tice process. In recent years, in anglophone
jurisdictions, the issue of public confidence in the
police has, in a number of guises and for a variety
of reasons, gradually moved up the political agen-
da. Public sensibilities increasingly govern the
politics of policing. There is a consensus that the
challenge for the police, in line with all public ser-
vices, is to respond effectively to the conflicting
demands and needs of an increasingly complex so-
ciety and demanding citizenry. In England and
Wales, as Neyroud (2009) has observed, the issue
of localization has ‘emerged again’ as part of the
commitment to giving service users both more
choice over the services they use and more say
about service provision (see also McLaughlin,
2005). This has occurred not only in the context
of political party rhetoric, but in the move away

from the myriad of quantitative performance indi-
cators relating to police performance to an
announcement in March 2009 that the British
government was abolishing the bulk of top-down
targets apart from a 60% ‘public confidence’ target
to be met by 2012. The target was part of the ‘Polic-
ing Pledge’ introduced in 2008, detailing what the
public should expect from the police at both the na-
tional and local level. In O’Connor’s (2010) words,
the British public, in the context of police perfor-
mance, would now be put ‘centre stage’. However,
in June 2010 the new coalition government an-
nounced that it was abolishing both the public
confidence and ‘Policing Pledge’. The focus will
now be on outcomes rather than meeting centrally
dictated processes. The police now find themselves
caught between a rock and a hard place. In an era of
serious cutbacks, a new realism dictates that the
commitment to resource intensive neighbourhood
policing may be unsustainable. However, if the new
government bolsters police accountability at a local
level, someone is going to have to explain why the
police broke such a highly publicized pledge. Con-
firmation that ‘pledges’ and ‘commitments’ are little
more than short-term political gimmicks means
that issues of public trust and confidence will be
once more to the fore. Rather than fade away, these

*E-mail: Jenny.Fleming@utas.edu.au
Policing, Volume 4, Number 3, pp. 199–202
doi: 10.1093/police/paq024
© The Authors 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSF Associates: Publius, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permissions please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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‘wicked issues’may even be fully politicized through
a system of accountability premised upon electoral
populism.

In the Australasian context, both Australia and
New Zealand have sought to engage the confidence
of communities and in putting these communities
‘centre stage’ have sought to determine what they
want and expect of their police. In New Zealand,
national public research into the needs and wants
of New Zealand citizens helped inform the devel-
opment of new policing legislation in New
Zealand. In Australia, where eight police jurisdic-
tions manage their citizens in their own way,
there is still common ground to be identified in
an ongoing concern with customer service, the
need to engender and improve public confidence,
particularly in ‘hard to reach groups’, to identify
security concerns, and to build trust. And this
when public opinion surveys across the country
consistently report high levels of support for and
confidence in police (Fleming and Grabosky,
2009). This has not been helped by government
efforts to manage and spin the official crime sta-
tistics, suggestions that an uneducated public is
rejecting the reality of good news crime statistics,
and demands that the public recognize the con-
straints on police. In addition, there has been the
highly damaging ritualistic adoption by the police
of policies and practices that are intended to convey
the impression of reform. Yet how can we feed a
public appetite that is ‘selective, not comprehensive’
(O’Connor, 2010). How do we ensure that the pub-
lic gets what the public wants? In England and
Wales, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary
have been set the task of ‘inspecting policing’ in the
public interest:

We have adopted an ‘outside-in’ ap-
proach, as opposed to the ‘inside-out’
of the past. By ‘outside-in’, I mean
putting the public centre stage. We
start with their questions, their under-
standing, and their concerns … we are
anchoring our work to public need

[original emphasis] (O ’Connor,
2010).

It could be argued of course that by raising such
expectations and encouraging the growing sense of
their own importance, the public will become insa-
tiable and unable to be placated. The challenge
facing the police today is how you engage positively
with the community, earn their confidence and
trust, reassure the many publics that you have ev-
erything under control (and at the same time
discourage prospective offenders) without elevat-
ing expectations to unreachable heights? How do
police provide a quality and responsive service to
their ‘customers’ while at the same time reducing
the appetite for services without damaging confi-
dence levels (Fleming and Grabosky, 2009)?

There is no paucity of literature addressing the
issues of public confidence and trust in policing
either in the UK or elsewhere (for an overview,
see Rix et al., 2009). Indeed, it seems set to become
a fully fledged policy domain. However, there is an
ever present danger for those of us working on the
police to pay too little attention to broader socio-
economic drivers at work. Perhaps we need to step
back to consider the normative transformations re-
sultant from the rise of a consumer culture defined
by an ever increasing number of forms and sites of
mass consumption where individuals ‘experience’
consumption as a project of identity formation
and expression (Zukin and Maguire, 2005). A criti-
cal question is whether lack of confidence and trust
in governmental activities, the erosion of institu-
tional authority, civil inattention, and ontological
insecurity are intrinsic and, to a degree, generation-
ally irreversible characteristics of such societies
(cf, Fukuyama, 1996; O’Neill, 2002)? What are
the implications of the disconcerting and disrup-
tive logics of consumer culture for those who
seem to think that raising ‘public’ confidence in
and generating positive views of the police are
largely technical matters, amenable to management
through target setting and the development of ‘best
practice’ toolkits and PowerPoint presentations?

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The Papers
The papers presented in this special issue are
authored by Australian, New Zealand, and UK
researchers and practitioners working on the key
issues that define contemporary debates regarding
public confidence in the police. The papers are
diverse, covering research on police legitimacy;
police officer confidence in the police and the
public, public expectations, witnesses and victims
and minority communities, community policing
initiatives, and reports on various reform pro-
grammes. They also highlight the diversity of
methodological approach. The contributors are se-
nior police practitioners and academics. The
papers derive from two workshops sponsored by
the British Academy and the Academy of Social
Sciences in Australia. The first workshop took place
at City University London in June 2009 and the sec-
ond was held at the Tasmanian Institute of Law
Enforcement Studies at the University of Tasmania
in Hobart, Australia in December 2009.1

The workshops brought together leading re-
searchers and practitioners who have significantly
advanced our understanding of the critical issues
relating to public trust and confidence in the police.
Its aim in doing so was to stimulate an informed
debate and inspire efforts to develop a more sophis-
ticated understanding of its key components and
most complex challenges. We asked speakers and
participants generally to consider the following
questions:

• What evidence is there to suggest a decline in
public confidence?

• If a decline can be evidenced what factors are
driving it?

• How is the issue of public confidence being un-
derstood from an organizational perspective?

• What is being done to address the issue?

• Do we have examples of how exactly con-
fidence and trust in public institutions are
produced and maintained?

• How is the issue of ‘public confidence’ being
understood across the different jurisdictions?

It became clear at both workshops that ‘public
confidence’ is a classic ‘wicked issue’—a complicated
and demanding concept to get to grips with, not least
because it is premised upon other tricky psycho-
social concepts, namely, perceptions, sentiments,
opinions, expectations, judgements, satisfaction,
trust, and legitimacy. And as we suggested previ-
ously, ‘the public’ is becoming an increasingly
hollowed out concept in multi-pluralist, consumer
societies. Some speakers expressed the hope that
the current focus on public confidence would
somehow liberate the police from the corrosive
effects of New Public Management and allow
Tyler’s (2007) principles of procedural justice to
generate a New Public Service model of policing.
Like several of our contributors, we remain sceptical
about this. A quick check through police force web-
sites provides ample evidence that public confidence
targets have been firmly locatedwithin performance
management regimes and police governance.

The issue of ‘public confidence’, as was evident
in both London and Hobart, raises many more
questions than answers:

• What are the legal implications of treating the
‘public’ not as a single entity, but as a set of
distinct ‘publics’?

1 We would like to acknowledge the important role that Alison Wakefield played in the ‘The Public gets what the Public
Wants’ workshops. Jenny Fleming and Alison Wakefield drafted the application together in consultation with Eugene
McLaughlin and P.A.J. Waddington. When Alison moved from City University London to the University of New South
Wales, Eugene McLaughlin assumed responsibility for the running of the London workshop. We would also like to thank
all the participants in both workshops for contributing to the debates so enthusiastically and to our referees for responding in
such a constructive and prompt manner. We would also like to thank those workshop participants who did not give papers
for their important input into our deliberations.

Interrogating the ‘Public Confidence’ Agenda Editorial Policing 201

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• Who are the critical constituencies when ac-
cessing ‘public’ confidence (e.g. how accurately
are defined interest groups and stakeholders
identified)?

• How can the police reach the ‘silent constituen-
cies’ who have distinctive, possibly complicated
policing needs?

• Do high or low levels of public confidence clus-
ter in particular localities or neighbourhoods?

• Where do people experience policing?

• Where do people acquire knowledge and in-
formation about the police?

• What is the relationship between expecta-
tions, satisfaction, and confidence?

• What constitutes a realistic or unrealistic pub-
lic expectation?

• To what extent does legitimacy foster
confidence?

Several overarching questions that emerged in both
workshops were ‘why has the issue of ‘public con-
fidence’ materialized across different jurisdictions,
what exactly is being measured and why are we
measuring it?, and ‘what are the operational limits
to the ‘public confidence’ agenda?’ Many of the pa-
pers here address these questions, albeit in different
ways. Yet many remain unanswered and others
arise. One is still left wondering for example,
how we have got from A to B—where exactly did
the public confidence agenda originate? Is it just
one manifestation of broader programmes of pub-

lic sector reform? Are similar sets of issues driving
this agenda in different jurisdictions? What are the
long-term implications of putting the public ‘cen-
tre stage’? If we continue to address these questions
in a research context, what methodologies should
we use? These issues are for another conversation
yet to be had. The papers in this volume provide a
strong, varied, and methodologically diverse range
of narratives that will provide a solid foundation
from which that conversation can take place.

References
Fleming, J, and Grabosky, P. (2009). “Managing the De-

mand for Police Services, or How to Control an
Insatiable Appetite.” Policing: A Journal of Policy and
Practice, Vol. 3(3): 281–291.

Fukuyama, F. (1996). Trust: The Social Virtues and the
Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press.

McLaughlin, E. (2005). “‘Forcing the Issue: New Labour,
‘New Localism’ and the Democratic Renewal of Police
Accountability’”. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice.
44(5): 473–489.

Neyroud, P. (2009). “Editorial: ‘Confidence and Satisfac-
tion’”. Policing a Journal of Policy and Practice. 3(4):
305–306.

O’Connor, D. (2010). “‘Performance from the Outside-In’”.
Policing a Journal of Policy and Practice. 4: 152–156.

O’Neill, O. (2002). A Question of Trust: the Reith Lectures.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rix, A., Joshua, F., Maguire, M., and Morton, S. (2009).
Improving Public Confidence in the Police: A Review of the
Evidence. London: Home Office Research, Development
and Statistics Directorate, Report 28.

Tyler, T. (ed.) (2007). Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: Inter-
national Perspectives. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Zukin, S., and Maguire, J.S. (2005). “Consumers and Con-
sumption.” American Sociological Review. 30: 173–192.

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UNDERSTANDING COOPERATION WITH POLICE IN A DIVERSE
SOCIETY

Kristina Murphy* and Adrian Cherney

Past research has shown that procedural justice enhances an authority’s legitimacy and encourages
people to cooperate with them. However, this past research has examined legitimacy by focusing solely
on the perceived legitimacy of authorities and has ignored how people may perceive the legitimacy of
the laws and rules authorities enforce. This distinction has relevance to the policing of ethnic mi-
nority groups who may come from different cultures or countries where distrust in the law and legal
institutions is prevalent. Using survey data collected from a random sample of 1,203 Australians,
this paper explores how procedural justice and both institutional and legal legitimacy impact on
people’s willingness to cooperate with police. The findings will be explained using Braithwaite’s
(

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3;

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0) social distancing framework.

Keywords: policing, procedural justice, legitimacy, cooperation, ethnicity, Australia

Introduction

A core function of the police is to ensure that citizens comply with the law. To effectively
maintain social order, the police must be widely obeyed and this obedience must occur
in both personal encounters with police, as well as in people’s everyday compliance with
the law. While the police can use strategies to enforce legal compliance or compliance
with police directives, strategies such as these can have negative consequences on peo-
ple’s cooperative behaviour. Weitzer and Brunson (2009) have shown that, in disadvan-
taged communities where police are often perceived to be heavy-handed with locals,
residents generally resist talking to police or fear contacting them to report a crime
or even one’s own victimization. Given the benefits to both police and society of a public
that is willing to assist and support them in collaborative crime control efforts, police
need to identify approaches that can motivate and encourage people to cooperate
voluntarily with police.

It is well recognized that police in Australia have had a problematic role in relation to
Aboriginal people (Cunneen 2001). However, given the wide-scale immigration of peo-
ple from non-English-speaking backgrounds, one of the most pressing challenges for
Australian police agencies in recent decades has been the policing of a growing mul-
ticultural society (Bird

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2).1 Australian research reveals that police agencies have
faced significant challenges in generating support and cooperation from ethnic minor-
ity groups (Bird 1992). The factors shaping the experiences of other ethnic and racial
minority groups are quite different from those shaping Indigenous populations. For
example, the attention that non-Indigenous minority groups and new migrants have

* Associate Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, QLD, 4122, Australia; t.murphy@-
griffith.edu.au.

1Census data indicate that one in four Australians is born overseas and one in seven Australians speaks a language other than
English at home. Aboriginal Australians represent only about 2.5 per cent of the overall Australian population (ABS 2006).

�The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD).
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

doi:10.1093/bjc/azr065 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2012) 52,

181

–201
Advance Access publication 19 August 2011

181

received from police, Australia’s State and Federal governments, and the media relating
to ethnic crime waves, their cultural assimilation and role in preventing religious ex-
tremism (Dixon and Maher 2002; Collins et al. 2000; Haywood et al. 2007) has potentially
unique implications for police/ethnic group relations quite distinct from the policing of
Indigenous communities. Hence, understanding how police can garner cooperation
from such a significant proportion of the population is warranted.

The importance of procedural justice

Sunshine and Tyler (2003) suggest that procedural justice considerations are particularly
important in shaping people’s motivation to cooperate with authorities. Procedural jus-
tice concerns the perceived fairness of the procedures involved in decision making and
the perceived treatment one receives from the decision maker. Research into the effects
of procedural justice has found that people are much more likely to want to cooperate
with police when they feel they will be treated in a fair, respectful and impartial manner
(Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Murphy et al. 2008). Procedural justice is thought to be ef-
fective in shaping cooperation because it increases the perceived legitimacy of an author-
ity (Tyler 1997; Hough et al. 2010). Legitimacy is a judgment people make about the
status of an organization itself as a legitimate authority and is an internalized belief that
an authority does their job well and is therefore entitled to be obeyed. Legitimacy also
reflects the level of confidence and trust people have in those authorities. Where au-
thorities are judged to be legitimate, people feel that they ought to defer to their deci-
sions and rules, cooperate with them and follow them voluntarily out of obligation
rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward.

United States and United Kingdom-based research provides clear evidence that
ethnicity shapes perceived levels of legitimacy and trust and impacts on people’s expe-
riences with and attitudes towards the law and legal authorities, with minorities being
less favourable in their evaluations (e.g. Jefferson and Walker 1993; Tyler and Huo 2002;
Sharp and Atherton 2007; Weitzer 2006). Research from the United States has shown
that minority group members are more likely to say they receive unfair outcomes and
that the procedures used by authorities during personal encounters are unfair (Tyler
and Huo 2002). Minorities also express low levels of trust in the motives of legal author-
ities. More generally, the criminological literature reveals that black people hold
the most negative views of legal authorities (e.g. Skogan 2005; Bowling et al. 2003).
Australian studies reveal a similar story, with ethnic minority groups being found to hold
less favourable assessments of the police compared to the general population (Bird
1992; Sivasubramaniam and Goodman-Delahunty 2008; Pickering et al. 2008).

When examining the antecedents of cooperation with police among whites, African
Americans and Hispanics in the United States, Sunshine and Tyler (2003) have found
that police legitimacy is the key to cooperation among all ethnic groups, with procedural
justice shaping perceptions of legitimacy. More recently, Tyler and his colleagues have
also found that procedural justice is the primary factor shaping Muslims’ perceptions of
police legitimacy and their willingness to cooperate and work with US police in anti-
terror policing (Tyler et al. 2010). Recent research conducted in the United Kingdom
has also revealed the importance of procedural justice and fairness to ethnic minority
groups (Bradford and Jackson 2010). As in the United States and the United Kingdom,
police agencies in Australia have faced significant challenges in generating voluntary

MURPHY AND CHERNEY

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cooperation from ethnic minority groups and there is a strong argument to be made
that enhancing police legitimacy in the eyes of ethnic minority groups should be a pri-
ority to Australian policing agencies. However, empirical research investigating the re-
lationship between procedural justice, legitimacy and ethnicity has so far been neglected
by Australian scholars (for the exception, see Murphy and Cherney in press).

‘Authority legitimacy’ versus ‘legal legitimacy’

Before proceeding to outline how ethnic minority groups may respond to procedural
justice-based policing in Australia, it is worth mentioning that procedural justice scholar-
ship has tended to conceptualize legitimacy as originating in the innate properties of an
institutional authority that leads people to trust that authority and feel obligated to co-
operate or comply with them. Murphy, Tyler and Curtis (2009) have recently argued that
past procedural justice research has overlooked how people may also perceive the le-
gitimacy of the laws and rules that an authority enforces (i.e. legal legitimacy). They suggest
that an authority itself may be seen to have legitimate authority, but people can still call
into question the legitimacy of the policies, rules and laws that those authorities are
enforcing. In such a situation, they argue that compliance or voluntary cooperation with
authorities may be less likely. Scholars from the United Kingdom have also recognized
the importance of legal legitimacy for understanding cooperation and compliance with
police (see Jackson et al. 2011).

Using survey data collected across three different regulatory contexts (including po-
licing), Murphy et al. (2009) found that the perceived legitimacy of the law did indeed
influence one’s willingness to cooperate or comply with authority, with those question-
ing the legitimacy of the law being less likely to cooperate with authorities. More impor-
tantly, public perceptions of legal legitimacy were found to moderate the effect of
procedural justice on cooperation. Procedural justice was found to be more important
in shaping people’s cooperation in a positive way when they questioned the legitimacy of
the law than when they saw the law as legitimate.

These findings are interesting to consider in the context of police/ethnic relations. As
noted earlier, research has shown procedural justice to be important for shaping minor-
ity groups’ willingness to cooperate and work with police on a range of matters. Whether
procedural justice will shape cooperation from ethnic minority group members who
question the legitimacy of the law still remains unknown. This is not an insignificant
issue because, as Pickering et al. (2008) have pointed out in the context of counter-
terrorist policing in Australia, many Muslim and Arab communities may support the
police as an institution, but see counter-terrorism laws as unfair because they feel they
are used against them disproportionately. Similarly, perceptions of racial profiling and
the over-policing of particular ethnic communities can further undermine perceptions
about the legitimacy of Australian laws and policies. New migrants and ethnic minority
groups may also question the legitimacy of the laws of their newly adopted country be-
cause they come from countries that have very different cultures and legal traditions.
Under such circumstances, it is unclear whether procedural justice will be more or less
important for encouraging their cooperation with police.

Murphy et al.’s (2009) research suggests that procedural justice might work particu-
larly well for such groups. However, some research does suggest the opposite. Tyler, Lind
and Huo’s (2000) study in the United States indicates that people care strongly about

UNDERSTANDING COOPERATION WITH POLICE IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY

183

their treatment by authorities when they believe they should have personalized connec-
tions with authorities and the institutions they represent. For people with the opposite
opinion, procedural justice is less of a concern. This possibly suggests that procedural
justice may be less effective for ethnic minority group members who have no desire to
interact with authorities who are guided by and enforce laws they believe are illegitimate.
Other studies have also thrown doubt on the power of procedural justice in shaping
cooperation and legitimacy (Huo et al. 1996; Huo 2003; Tankebe 2009).

Perhaps, for minority group members who weakly identify with Australia’s system of
laws and rules (i.e. they question the legitimacy of the law), procedural justice may have
little impact in shaping their willingness to cooperate with police. However, while studies
highlight circumstances whereby procedural justice plays little role, these same studies
do not provide an adequate explanation for why ethnic minorities who question the
legitimacy of the law may respond differently to procedural justice than majority

group

members who question the legitimacy of the law.

A social distancing framework

Lind and Tyler’s (

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8) group value model has been used in the literature to explain
why procedural justice is important to people and why it positively shapes compliance-
related behaviours. The model suggests that procedural justice communicates a message
that a person is valued and respected, and that unfair treatment signifies that police do
not consider them to be an important or valued member of the community. The group
value model focuses predominantly on identification and the social bonds that exist
between authorities and those they govern, with social bonds being effectively fostered
through fair treatment. The limitation of this model, however, is that social bonds may
work very well when the interests of the authority and individual/group coincide, but
what happens when the interests of each conflict (e.g. through disagreements over pol-
icies and laws)?

We suggest that Valerie Braithwaite’s (2003; 2010) theory of social distancing can offer
a useful theoretical framework for predicting anticipated differences in procedural jus-
tice effects between minority and non-minority group members who question the legit-
imacy of the law. This is because it focuses on both interpersonal social bonds between
authorities and those they govern and individuals’ commitment towards institutional
goals and means. While Braithwaite has not applied her theory of social distancing
to the policing context, her work in other regulatory domains has received growing at-
tention in the literature (e.g. Braithwaite et al. 2007a; Hartner et al. 2008).

Braithwaite argues that individuals evaluate authorities and their laws in terms of how
they perform or what they stand for and that, as such evaluations are made, revised and
shared with others over time, people develop a position in relation to the authority and
its system of laws. Social distancing is a concept central to this positioning and refers to the
degree to which individuals or groups have positive feelings for other individuals, insti-
tutions and their legal systems. In a regulatory context, social distancing relates to in-
dividual or group attitudes towards an authority and/or its policies (e.g. the liking one
has for the police and their policies) and also reflects whether individuals believe the
institution’s goals can be achieved through acceptable means.

Braithwaite (2003) identifies different ways that individuals can position themselves in
relation to legal authorities and she calls this positioning motivational posturing. She

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suggests that there are individuals who are committed to doing right by authority figures
and feel a moral obligation to do so. They agree with institutional goals and the means
through which those institutions go about achieving them. People who are committed
place less social distance between themselves and authority, and are more likely to co-
operate and comply with legal authorities and their laws. Alternatively, there are those
who choose to place greater social distance between themselves and authority. These
people are more likely to display resistance towards authority and its rules or, at the most
extreme level, are more likely to disengage themselves from interacting with an authority
and its legal regulations. Resistance reflects doubts about whether an authority will act
appropriately to achieve its goals. In this context, a person or group may accept the
police as a legitimate institution of social control, but express opposition towards
the way police use their power or the laws they enforce. People who tend to be resistant
towards legal authority display this resistance as a way of expressing their right to chal-
lenge policies and/or authority treatment that they see as unfair or unreasonable. Reac-
tions can be manifested verbally (e.g. name-calling, arguments) or non-verbally (e.g.
physical aggression, uncooperative behaviour). Braithwaite argues that, once a resistor’s
concerns are allayed, however, they can usually be encouraged to move towards a posture
of commitment.

Disengagement, in contrast, goes beyond resistance and the main objective is to dis-
engage from an authority and its rules and reflects a desire to step outside the system.
Disengagers disagree with both the goals authorities wish to achieve and the means by
which they achieve them. While individuals cannot disengage completely from the in-
stitution of policing, disengagement in this context may manifest itself in avoidance
behaviour. The problem is that disengaged people are unlikely to want to interact at
all with an authority or comply with its directions or system of rules and, in extreme
circumstances, may seek out alternative systems of justice (Braithwaite 2010; Weitzer
and Brunson 2009).2

Braithwaite’s postures are not static and, in any one interaction with an authority, dif-
ferent postures may come to the fore (Braithwaite 2010; Braithwaite et al. 2007a). For
example, during a routine street patrol, police may observe a range of postures. The
common one is when a person flips from a position of commitment to resistance as
the police become heavy-handed. Hence, Braithwaite argues that how people are treated
by authorities can change the social distance they place between themselves and author-
ity. Treat people well and it will reduce social distancing; treat people badly and it will
increase social distancing. Braithwaite suggests, however, that people who choose to dis-
engage themselves from an authority and its rules are particularly difficult to ‘win over’,
even when procedural justice is deployed in an attempt to engage such groups, one
reason being that procedural justice may be seen as an insincere attempt to win coop-
eration (see Braithwaite et al. 2007b). In the context of policing, a history of poor treat-
ment or entrenched mistrust of police can be difficult to overcome no matter what the
police do or say (Brandl et al. 1994; Skogan 2006).

Braithwaite’s framework is useful for thinking about the way ethnic minority groups
may respond to procedural justice when they question the legitimacy of the law. If it is
the case that people who question the legitimacy of the law are simply more resistant

2Braithwaite’s framework is not dissimilar to Merton’s (

196

8) typology of ‘modes of adaptation’, with Braithwaite (2010: Chapter
3) acknowledging this link.

UNDERSTANDING COOPERATION WITH POLICE IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY

185

towards their views of the specific law or policy, then one might expect procedurally fair
treatment to be effective in nurturing their cooperation. This is because fair treatment
communicates a message that the police are trying to employ those laws or policies in an
unbiased fashion. Similarly, resisters may view an authority that uses procedural justice as
one that takes their concerns about illegitimate policies into account when deciding on
which course of action to take. Hence, such an approach may be able to shift individuals
from a resistant posture to a more committed one, thereby increasing their cooperation
with that authority. However, if such people question the legitimacy of the law because
they have chosen to disengage themselves from mainstream rules and laws and from the
institutions that control them, then one might expect procedural justice to be less ef-
fective or ineffective in fostering their cooperation with an authority who enforces those
laws. For such people, attempts by the police to use procedural justice may be viewed
with scepticism and as an insincere attempt to coerce them into cooperation. In fact, in
her tax compliance research, Braithwaite (2010) has found empirically that procedural
justice can be ineffective for disengagers. Considering different expressions of defiance
via social distancing therefore might be able to explain how procedural justice may have
little impact on cooperation amongst particular groups who question the legitimacy of
the law (i.e. minority, disengagers) while having a positive effect on cooperation for
others who also say they question the legitimacy of the law (i.e. non-minority, resisters).
Of interest here is whether ethnic minority group members will display higher levels of
disengagement towards police than non-minority group members and whether proce-
dural justice can be used to foster their cooperation with police, particularly when they
question the legitimacy of the law.

Method

Participants and procedure

This study utilizes survey data collected from a national sample of 1,203 Australian citi-
zens. In 2009, 2,088 surveys were posted to a national sample of Australian citizens. All
2,088 recipients of the survey had previously participated in a survey conducted in 2007.
The original 2007 sample had been selected randomly from the Australian electoral roll
and selection had been stratified by State and Territory jurisdiction. Given the national
and randomized scope of the sample selection process in the 2007 survey, both ethnic
minority and majority group members had the opportunity to be represented.

The 2009 follow-up survey contained a range of questions, including general views
about crime and safety, as well as specific attitudes and beliefs about police and the
law, and police treatment of citizens. It had a particular focus on procedural justice,
social distancing and legitimacy issues. A total of 1,204 completed surveys were returned
for analysis. When adjusted for respondents who did not live at the original address
listed in the electoral roll or who were incapable of completing the survey (N =
232), an adjusted response rate of 65 per cent was obtained. Item non-response or miss-
ing data was quite low. For example, the missing data on the age and sex variables were
4.4 and 0.2 per cent, respectively. Typically, the percent missing on the attitudinal var-
iables throughout the survey was between 0 and 5.

Respondents in the final sample were between 14 and 93 years of age (M = 56.13; SD =
15.00), 46 per cent were male, 75 per cent were married or in a de facto relationship, 32

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per cent had attained a university qualification, 25 per cent were born overseas and the
average household income was reported to be AUS$82,344 (approximately £52,114).
One respondent was under the age of 18, so was deleted from further analysis. Using
2006 Australian Census data, the sample was found to be broadly representative of the
overall Australian population. However, like many mail surveys, those who are older and
more educated tend to be slightly overrepresented. Men were also slightly underrepre-
sented in the survey (by 3.23 per cent). We decided against weighting the data due to the
fact that the differences between the sample and general population were quite small
(for a technical report on the survey, including issues about sample representativeness,
response bias, etc., see Murphy et al. 2010).

Determining ethnic minority group membership

Since the

195

0s, Australia has become a culturally and ethnically diverse society. Immi-
grants from China and Vietnam form the largest non-English-speaking groups and those
born in Lebanon are the most common Arabic-speaking group. Other common migrant
streams include those from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Italy, Greece and the
Netherlands. One in four people in Australia is born overseas and the 2006 Australian
Census shows that, of those who are born in Australia, 26 per cent had at least one
overseas-born parent (ABS 2006). Unlike in the United States, where there are three
predominant groups represented in the population (whites, African Americans, His-
panics), ethnicity in Australia is much more heterogeneous in nature. As a result, in
a national survey in which participants have been drawn randomly from the population,
it is much more difficult to cluster respondents into discrete ethnic and racial groups as
is usually done in United States-based research.

Ethnic minority group membership in the present study was determined via self-
report using five survey questions: country of birth (Australia versus overseas), country
of father’s birth, country of mother’s birth, ancestry (up to two ancestries could be
listed) and language spoken at home. Among the 1,203 respondents were 223 people
who identified themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority group. Ethnic minority
status was determined if the respondent was from a non-Anglo-Saxon background; if
the country of birth or ancestry items identified respondents as being of an Anglo-Saxon
nature (i.e. outside of Australia, but from countries such as the United Kingdom, Neth-
erlands, Sweden, New Zealand), respondents were not included in the ethnic minority
group. Instead, they were categorized as a non-ethnic minority group member. However,
if respondents indicated that they were born in Australia, but that their ancestry or
parents’ country of birth was from a non-Anglo-Saxon background (e.g. China, India,
Maori), they were included in the ethnic minority group.3 This process produced two
distinct groups based on ethnic background: (1) the ethnic minority group (coded as 1;
N = 223 or 19 per cent of the sample) and (2) the non-minority group (coded as 0; N =
980 or 81 per cent of the sample). It should be noted at this stage that, while one in four
people in Australia is born overseas according to Census statistics (and 25 per cent of our
sample was born overseas), a significant proportion of these people are from the United

3Due to the fact this survey was a national survey in which people had been randomly selected from the population, responses
from Indigenous Australians were too low to produce a meaningful sample for analysis on their own; Indigenous respondents were
included in the ethnic minority group.

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187

Kingdom (approximately 5 per cent of Australia’s total population). Hence, we would not
expect to see 25 per cent of our minority group sample being from a non-Anglo-Saxon,
ethnic minority background. What was comforting to see from our minority sample, how-
ever, was that the profile of the minority group reflected the diversity of backgrounds en-
countered in Australia (in excess of 50 non-Anglo-Saxon backgrounds represented; see
Murphy et al. 2010).

Measures

Of particular interest to this study are survey questions related to four variables: (1) pro-
cedural justice; (2) legitimacy of the law; (3) legitimacy of the police; and (4) self-
reported willingness to cooperate with police. Also used in this study were Braithwaite’s
(2010) social distancing measures of commitment, resistance and disengagement, and
some demographic control variables (see Appendix 1 for details). Prior to developing
the scales, a factor analysis was first conducted to test for the assumed conceptual dif-
ferentiation between the variables used to construct the scales. As can be seen in Table 1,
seven constructs were revealed, although items comprising the resistance scale cross-
loaded with the disengagement scale. The two cross-loading items were therefore de-
leted from the resistance scale, leaving a two-item resistance measure. Cronbach alpha
coefficients for all scales, with the exception of the resistance scale, were found to be
reasonably high, indicating strong and reliable scales.
Procedural justice Procedural justice was operationalized here via Tyler’s (2006) four
concepts of voice, fairness, respect and neutrality. The six items used to construct
the procedural justice scale were measured using a five-point Likert scale (e.g. ‘Police
treat all people fairly’; 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree), with a higher score
indicating greater perceptions of procedural justice (M = 3.25, SD = 0.64, Cronbach
alpha = 0.87).
Law legitimacy The five-item law legitimacy scale was based on the scale used by Murphy
et al. (2009). It assessed whether citizens questioned the legitimacy of some of the laws
the police are charged with enforcing (e.g. ‘My own feelings about what is right and
wrong usually agree with the rules and laws enforced by police’; 1 = strongly disagree
to 5 = strongly agree); higher scores reflect those who see laws as more legitimate (M =
3.81, SD = 0.51, Cronbach alpha = 0.83).
Police legitimacy This scale measured participants’ level of judgment of whether police
have legitimacy. As noted earlier, legitimacy has usually been measured through people’s
trust and confidence in police and their beliefs that authorities do their job well and are
therefore entitled to be obeyed. The five questions used to assess police legitimacy in this
study assessed feelings of trust and confidence in the police (e.g. ‘I have confidence in
the police’; 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree); a higher score on this scale
reflects higher levels of perceived legitimacy (M = 3.93, SD = 0.72, Cronbach
alpha = 0.92).
Cooperation The cooperation scale was assessed via four items designed to measure
respondents’ self-reported willingness to cooperate with police (e.g. ‘How likely would
you be to help police to find someone suspected of committing a crime by providing
them with information?’; 1 = very unlikely to 5 = very likely). Those scoring higher on this
scale were more likely to indicate they would voluntarily cooperate with police (M = 4.34,
SD = 0.61, Cronbach alpha = 0.88).

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Social distance scales Braithwaite’s (2003) commitment, resistance and disengagement
scales were taken and adapted here for use in the policing context. The commitment
scale comprised four items (e.g. ‘Overall, I am committed to doing the right thing by
police’; M = 4.12, SD = 0.52, Cronbach alpha = 0.79), the final resistance scale comprised
two items (e.g. ‘It’s important not to let police push you around’, M = 3.07, SD = 0.71,
Cronbach alpha = 0.40) and the disengagement scale comprised four items (e.g. ‘I don’t
really know what the police expect of me and I’m not about to ask’; M = 2.09, SD = 0.61,
Cronbach alpha = 0.74). All items used to construct the social distancing scales were

TABLE 1 Factor analysis differentiating items used to construct the scales

Item Factor

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Procedural justice

All citizens treated politely 0.81
Police always polite 0.79
Police treat everyone equally 0.76
Police treat all people fairly 0.73
Police treat people with dignity/respect 0.64
Police listen to people 0.60

Police legitimacy

I have confidence in police 0.84
I trust police 0.81
I am proud of my police force 0.78
I respect police 0.75
Have great confidence in police as . . . 0.67

Law legitimacy

Own feelings of right/wrong . . . 0.80
Own feelings of right/wrong . . . 0.80
Laws of criminal justice system . . . 0.79
Police enforced laws generally . . . 0.74
Agree with many of the values . . . 0.48

Cooperation

Help police find suspect 0.87
Call police to report crime 0.80
Report dangerous/suspicious activity 0.80
Willingly assist police if asked 0.77

Disengagement

If I find out I’m not doing what police . . . 0.76
Don’t think there is much police can do . . . 0.76
Don’t know what police expect of me . . . 0.69
Don’t care if not doing right by police . . . 0.60

Resistance

Important not to let police push . . . 0.84
Impossible to satisfy requirements . . . 0.57
As a society, we need more people . . . 0.48 0.43#
If police get tough, will not cooperate . . . 0.56 0.24#

Commitment

I obey police with goodwill 0.77
I am committed to doing right . . . 0.75
I feel a moral obligation to obey police . . . 0.71
Following police decisions is . . . 0.62
Eigenvalues 10.29 2.75 2.07 1.92 1.56 1.27 1.07
Explained variance (%) 32.15 8.60 6.45 6.00 4.89 3.98 3.35

Principal components factoring with varimax rotation. Only loadings> 0.35 are displayed. Full wording of items can
be found in Appendix 1. # denotes cross-loading onto two factors.

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189

measured on a 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree scale. Higher scores on each scale –
reflected greater levels of commitment, resistance and disengagement, respectively.
Control variables Several demographic variables were also included in the analysis.
These variables were the sex, age, income level and educational attainment of partic-
ipants, as well as the number of contacts they have had with police in the preceding
12 months (excluding any social or work contact). Educational attainment was assessed
on a 1–10 scale (1 = no formal schooling to 10 = post-graduate degree). Also included as
a control variable was the ethnicity measure developed above (0 = non-minority; 1 =
ethnic minority).

Results

Descriptive statistics

Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations for all scales for the ethnic minority
and non-minority groups, respectively.4 Table 2 shows that ethnic minority group mem-
bers differed significantly from non-minority group members on a number of measures.
T-tests revealed that ethnic minority group members were more likely to question the
legitimacy of the law, were less likely to indicate they would cooperate with police and
they were more disengaged than non-minority group members. There were no differ-
ences between the groups on the procedural justice, police legitimacy, resistance or
commitment measures.

Table 2 also shows bivariate relationships between the scales for the entire sample. First,
those who question the legitimacy of the law are less likely to adopt a committed posture
towards authority and are more likely to display resistance and disengagement towards

TABLE 2 Means, standard deviations and bivariate correlations for all measures (standard deviations are in

brackets)

Measure Ethnic minority
group

Non-minority
group

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

M (SD) M (SD)

1. Procedural justice 3.21 (0.63) 3.26 (0.64) 1
2. Police legitimacy 3.86 (0.69) 3.94 (0.73) 0.63* 1
3. Law legitimacy 3.75 (0.52) 3.82* (0.51) 0.38* 0.43* 1
4. Cooperation 4.20 (0.62) 4.37* (0.60) 0.28* 0.34* 0.29* 1
5. Commitment 4.10 (0.55) 4.17 (0.52) 0.40* 0.50* 0.42* 0.35* 1
6. Resistance 3.13 (0.74) 3.06 (0.71) –0.26*–0.24*–0.24*–0.12*–0.17* 1
7. Disengagement 2.23 (0.64) 2.05* (0.60) –0.32*–0.29*–0.35*–0.33*–0.41* 0.26* 1
8. Age 50.51 (14.76) 57.41* (14.77) 0.21* 0.15* 0.04 0.10* 0.03 0.13*–0.03 1
9. Sex (0 = female) – –

– – – – – – – –

10. Education 6.29 (2.40) 5.85* (2.37) –0.14*–0.13* 0.14* 0.03 –0.06*–0.19*–0.02–0.21*
11. Income 80.56 (53.41) 82.76 (55.67) –0.10*–0.08* 0.06 0.04 0.03 –0.09*–0.01–0.35*
12. Police contact 0.62 (1.12) 1.13 (9.88) –0.00 –0.01 –0.00 –0.02 0.04 0.00 –0.02–0.02
13. Ethnicity (0 =
majority)

– – – – – – – –

* Significant at p � 0.05; given the categorical nature of the sex and ethnicity variables, correlations were not
computed.

4In assessing the normal distribution of all measures utilized in this study, only the police contact variable was found to be highly
skewed. The response distribution for all other measures was normal.

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police. This supports the notion that those who question the legitimacy of the law are
more likely to place greater social distance between themselves and authority. Other note-
worthy positive relationships are between procedural justice and cooperation, and also
between police legitimacy, law legitimacy and cooperation. In conjunction, respondents
who view police as legitimate are also more likely to view the law as legitimate. Finally,
procedural justice is correlated positively with commitment and correlated negatively with
both resistance and disengagement, suggesting that, if people view police as treating peo-
ple fairly, they will be more committed and less resistant or disengaged.

Regression analyses

In order to assess whether procedural justice is effective in promoting willingness to
cooperate with police, a regression analysis was first conducted using the full sample.
Note that all variables were centred prior to undertaking the regression analyses as sug-
gested by Aiken and West (1991). Centring helps address high correlations between
each of the main effect variables and the interaction term. Hierarchical regression—
in which different variables are entered into the regression model at separate
steps—was chosen to assess: (1) the relative importance of each variable when added
to the model; and (2) whether police legitimacy mediates the effect of procedural justice
on cooperation. When all variables were in the model at Step 5, Table 3 shows that those
who were older, earned more and who saw the police and the law to be legitimate were
more likely to cooperate with police. Procedural justice did not significantly predict co-
operative behaviour when all variables in the model were taken into account. However,
procedural justice did predict willingness to cooperate with police right up until the
point when the police legitimacy measure was entered into the model at Step 4. This
finding supports previous procedural justice studies that show that perceptions of police
legitimacy can mediate the effect of procedural justice on cooperation with police (e.g.
Sunshine and Tyler 2003). A Sobel test further confirmed the significance of this medi-
ation effect (z = 6.90, p < 0.001; the table in Appendix 2 presents a separate regression analysis showing predictors of the mediator ‘police legitimacy’; this additional regres- sion shows that procedural justice is a major predictor of police legitimacy).

At Step 5 of the model, it can also be seen that ethnicity was marginally significant, with
minority respondents being less willing to cooperate with police than non-minority group
respondents. Important is the interaction between procedural justice and law legitimacy
on cooperation and the three-way interaction between procedural justice, law legitimacy
and ethnicity on cooperation. The first interaction replicates Murphy et al.’s (2009) find-
ing that procedural justice appears to be more effective at shaping cooperation among
those who question the legitimacy of the law. However, the second three-way interaction
reveals this effect is further moderated by the ethnicity of the respondent.

To explore this three-way interaction further, two additional regressions were con-
ducted. The first examined how procedural justice and law legitimacy interacted with
each other to influence cooperation in minority group respondents; the second exam-
ined this relationship for non-minority group respondents (see Table 4).

Table 4 shows that, for the ethnic minority group, age, procedural justice, law legitimacy
and police legitimacy were predictors of willingness to cooperate with police. Older
respondents and those who perceived the law and the police to be more legitimate were
more likely to indicate they would willingly cooperate with police. For the minority

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191

TABLE 3 Regression analysis for all respondents showing predictors of ‘cooperation with police’

Predictor B SEB b r2

part

Step 1
(Constant) 3.91 0.13
Age 0.01 0.00 0.14*** 0.02
Ethnicity (0 = non-minority; 1 = minority) –0.06 0.05 –0.04
Sex (0 = female; 1 = male) 0.05 0.04 0.04
Income 0.00 0.00 0.09* 0.01
Education 0.00 0.01 0.01
Police contact 0.00 0.01 0.01
Step 2
(Constant) 3.98 0.12
Age 0.00 0.00 0.09** 0.01
Ethnicity (0 = non-minority; 1 = minority) –0.07 0.05 –0.04
Sex (0 = female; 1 = male) 0.04 0.04 0.04
Income 0.00 0.00 0.10** 0.01
Education 0.01 0.01 0.04
Police contact 0.02 0.01 0.05
Procedural justice 0.27 0.03 0.29*** 0.08
Step 3
(Constant) 4.04 0.12
Age 0.00 0.00 0.09** 0.01
Ethnicity (0 = non-minority; 1 = minority) –0.05 0.05 –0.04
Sex (0 = female; 1 = male) 0.03 0.04 0.03
Income 0.00 0.00 0.08* 0.01
Education 0.00 0.01 0.00
Police contact 0.02 0.01 0.06
Procedural justice 0.19 0.03 0.21*** 0.03
Law legitimacy 0.26 0.04 0.22*** 0.04
Step 4
(Constant) 4.04 0.12
Age 0.00 0.00 0.09** 0.01
Ethnicity (0 = non-minority; 1 = minority) –0.05 0.05 –0.04
Sex (0 = female; 1 = male) 0.01 0.04 0.01
Income 0.00 0.00 0.08* 0.01
Education 0.00 0.01 0.02
Police contact 0.02 0.01 0.06
Procedural justice 0.06 0.04 0.06
Law legitimacy 0.19 0.04 0.16*** 0.02
Police legitimacy 0.22 0.03 0.27*** 0.04
Step 5
(Constant) 4.05 0.12
Age 0.00 0.00 0.09* 0.01
Ethnicity (0 = non-minority; 1 = minority) –0.09 0.05 –0.06y
Sex (0 = female; 1 = male) 0.01 0.04 0.01
Income 0.00 0.00 0.09* 0.01
Education 0.00 0.01 0.02
Police contact 0.03 0.01 0.07* 0.01
Procedural justice 0.06 0.04 0.07
Law legitimacy 0.17 0.04 0.15*** 0.02
Police legitimacy 0.21 0.03 0.27*** 0.04
PJ � law legitimacy –0.13 0.05 –0.09** 0.01
PJ � law legitimacy � ethnicity 0.34 0.13 0.10** 0.01

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5
R2 0.02 0.10 0.14 0.19 0.20
Adjusted R2 0.02 0.10 0.14 0.18 0.18
R2 change 0.02 0.08 0.04 0.04 0.01
F change 3.31** 72.11*** 38.87*** 42.14*** 4.93**
Df 6,821 1,820 1,819 1,818 2,816

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; y p < 0.07.

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group sample, procedural justice had a negative effect on cooperation. For the non-
minority group, income level, police contact, procedural justice, law legitimacy and police
legitimacy influenced willingness to cooperate with police. All had positive relation-
ships. The interesting finding is that procedural justice appeared to be counterproduc-
tive in shaping willingness to cooperate with police for the ethnic minority group, but
effective for the non-minority group.

More importantly, for both the non-minority and ethnic minority groups, the inter-
action between procedural justice and law legitimacy was found to be significant. Table 4
shows that the interaction term was negative for the non-minority group, but positive for
the ethnic minority group. To further illustrate the meaning of this interaction, simple
slope effects were calculated for both groups and are depicted graphically in Figure 1.

The simple slope effects revealed that, for the non-minority group, procedural justice
was effective at increasing cooperation levels for those who questioned the legitimacy of
the law (see Figure 1a). In other words, cooperation was much higher for those who
questioned the legitimacy of the law when they thought the police treated people fairly
compared to when they thought police treated people unfairly (b = 0.20, p < 0.001). In contrast, procedural justice had no effect on cooperation levels when people did not question the legitimacy of the laws police enforce (b = 0.05, p < 0.36). This finding replicates Murphy et al.’s (2009) results.

For the ethnic minority group, procedural justice had a very different impact on coop-
eration (see Figure 1b). Once again, those who viewed the law to be more legitimate
were overall more likely to indicate they would cooperate with police and it can be
seen that procedural justice had no impact for those who viewed the law as legitimate
(b = –0.05, p < 0.67). But, for minority group members who questioned the legitimacy of the law, procedural justice had a significant negative effect on their willingness to co- operate with police (b = –0.32, p < 0.01). This particular finding is important, as it sug- gests that procedural justice might be counterproductive in shaping cooperation for minorities who question the legitimacy of the law.

TABLE 4 Regression analyses showing predictors of ‘cooperation with police’ for the minority and non-minority

group

Ethnic minority group (N = 223) Non-minority group (N = 980)

Predictor B SEB b r2
part B SEB b r2

part

(Constant) 3.84 0.24 4.08 0.13
Age 0.01 0.00 0.19* 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.06
Sex (0 = female) –0.06 0.09 –0.05 0.03 0.04 0.02
Income 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.00 0.00 0.09* 0.01
Education –0.01 0.02 –0.05 0.01 0.01 0.03
Police contact 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.03 0.01 0.07* 0.01
Procedural justice –0.17 0.08 –0.18* 0.02 0.12 0.04 0.12** 0.01
Law legitimacy 0.32 0.10 0.29*** 0.06 0.13 0.05 0.11** 0.01
Police legitimacy 0.22 0.08 0.27** 0.05 0.21 0.04 0.26*** 0.04
PJ � law legitimacy 0.24 0.11 0.16* 0.02 –0.14 0.05 –0.10** 0.01
R2 0.23 0.20
Adjusted R2 0.18 0.19
F 4.84*** 18.18***
Df 9,145 9,663

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

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193

How can one explain why procedural justice is counterproductive for minority
groups who question the legitimacy of the law when it can be effective for non-mi-
nority groups who question the legitimacy of the law? We suggest that the social dis-
tance some minority group members place between themselves and the institutions
that govern them may explain such a finding. As we revealed in Table 2, minority
group members were significantly more disengaged from police than the non-minor-
ity group members. To ascertain whether level of disengagement can be used as
a valid explanation for the findings, an additional hierarchical regression was under-
taken using procedural justice and disengagement as predictors of cooperation with
police. Given there were no differences between the minority and non-minority
groups on the resistance and commitment measures, only disengagement was
examined.

As can be seen in Table 5, when considered alone, procedural justice does appear to
have an overall positive effect on minority group willingness to cooperate with police.
Step 2 of Table 5 also shows that disengagement was a negative predictor of cooperation,
with those who were more disengaged being less willing to cooperate. Of particular in-
terest is the finding that disengagement mediates the effect of procedural justice on mi-
nority group members’ willingness to cooperate with police. The positive effect of

FIG. 1 Willingness to cooperate with police as a function of citizens’ views of procedural justice (low

versus high) and perceived legitimacy of laws (low versus high) for (a) non-minority group respondents

and (b) ethnic minority group respondents

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procedural justice on cooperation disappeared when the disengagement variable was
entered into the model at Step 2. The significance of this mediation effect was con-
firmed via a Sobel test (z = 2.99, p < 0.01).5 This mediation effect provides a possible explanation for why procedural justice may have been counterproductive for the minor- ity group when they questioned the legitimacy of the law; that is, cooperation from mi- nority group members is influenced by the level of disengagement they choose to adopt.

Discussion

Before discussing the findings in detail, the limitations of the present study need to be
considered. First, given the cross-sectional nature of the survey data, it is impossible to
make definitive conclusions about the causal relationships between the variables inves-
tigated. Second, it can be seen in Figure 1 that cooperation levels among those respond-
ents who view the law as legitimate, particularly for the non-minority group, were high,
even when they perceived treatment to be procedurally unfair. This potential ceiling
effect could have masked a stronger positive effect for procedural justice for both
the minority and non-minority groups. If cooperation levels had not been close to
the maximum of the scale (i.e. ceiling), an interaction between procedural justice
and law legitimacy may also not have been revealed for the non-minority group. Ceiling
effects can signal a possible bias in the sample. In our case, perhaps people who are more
cooperative with police are also more likely to complete surveys. Third, the present study
may suffer from shared method variance. Given all measures were obtained through self-
report survey methodology, relationships between the variables may be inflated. The
data were centred prior to analysis in an attempt to deal with this issue. Fourth, the
R-squared values for some of the regression models were relatively low, suggesting that
additional factors not included in the models may also help to explain people’s willing-
ness to cooperate with police. Such factors may include the type of contact people have
had with police in the past (negative versus positive), the neighbourhood conditions in
which they live (high-crime versus low-crime area) or the type of policing approach used

TABLE 5 Regression analyses showing predictors of ‘cooperation with police’ among the minority group sample

when (a) procedural justice and (b) disengagement are used as predictors

Predictor B SEB b r2
part

Step 1
(Constant) 4.21 0.04
Procedural justice 0.17 0.07 0.17* 0.03
Step 2
(Constant) 4.24 0.04
Procedural justice 0.08 0.07 0.08
Disengagement –0.27 0.07 –0.29*** 0.07

Step 1 Step 2
R2 0.03 0.10
Adjusted R2 0.03 0.10
R2 change 0.03 0.07
F change 6.32* 16.40***
Df 1,202 1,201

5For the minority group, procedural justice and disengagement were also negatively correlated with each other (r = –0.32, p <

0.001).

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195

in their neighbourhood. Despite these limitations, however, the current study provides
important insights into the contingency that surrounds the impact of procedural justice
on cooperation with the police.

This study aimed to understand the role of procedural justice in fostering ethnic mi-
nority group cooperation with police, particularly for those minorities who may question
the legitimacy of the laws they are being asked to obey. The results revealed that people’s
perceptions of the legitimacy of the law matter. It moderated the impact of procedural
justice on willingness to cooperate with police, with those questioning the legitimacy of
the law being more positively affected by procedural justice. This interaction effect was
further moderated by the ethnicity of the respondent. It was found that treating non-
minority group members with procedural justice when they question the legitimacy of
the law can improve their cooperation levels. For the ethnic minority group, in contrast,
it was found that procedural justice had a counterproductive effect on cooperation lev-
els for those who questioned the legitimacy of the law.

Other interesting differences between the minority and majority group members were
also revealed. For the minority group respondents, age shaped their willingness to co-
operate with police, with younger respondents being less likely to cooperate with police
than older minority group members. For the majority group, age did not play a role in
predicting cooperation with police, but income level did; those earning less were less
likely to cooperate. These differences make sense if we consider other research. For in-
stance, it has consistently been found that racial minorities provide less favourable assess-
ments of the police and police conduct than majority group citizens. Age has been found
to compound these views, with minority youth in particular feeling more over-policed
(Leiber et al. 1998). It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that age in our minority group
sample emerged as a significant predictor of cooperation. Past research also reveals that
middle- and upper-class citizens rate police more positively (Skogan 2006). Hence, for
our non-minority group sample, income level may have been more relevant than age in
determining assessments of police and subsequent willingness to cooperate with them.

Explaining the procedural justice � legitimacy of laws � ethnicity effect

The finding that procedural justice has a counterproductive effect on cooperation levels
among ethnic minority group members who question the legitimacy of the law is a par-
ticularly important finding, especially so given procedural justice was found to be effec-
tive at shaping cooperation with police among non-minority group members who
questioned the legitimacy of the law. Braithwaite’s (2003; 2010) social distancing frame-
work can be used to explain these results. Braithwaite’s social distancing framework
draws attention to how general and specific attitudes towards the police influence public
cooperation and support for police. It builds upon Lind and Tyler’s (1988) group value
model that proposes that fair procedures matter because they communicate whether
individuals are respected members of a group. The group value model explains why
people react to procedural justice, but not the how. Social distancing is a dynamic
way of understanding these reactions because it identifies the psychological strategies
people employ when coming into contact with authorities like police. These strategies
may change, depending on the quality of the relationship and contact they have with
that institution, the views they hold about the laws the police enforce or the indirect
stories they have heard about police from significant others. Motivational postures serve

MURPHY AND CHERNEY

196

the function of protecting people’s sense of dignity when encountering an authority and
they signal to an authority how satisfied people are with its objectives and practices.

We obtained empirical evidence showing that procedural justice may have varying
effects on different population groups, depending on the level of social distancing they
choose to adopt and, in particular, the level of disengagement they display. First, we
demonstrated that procedural justice was negatively associated with disengagement
and resistance levels, but positively with commitment. Those who felt the police treat
people with procedural justice were less likely to be disengaged or resistant and more
likely to be committed. These findings suggest that procedural justice may be able to
increase or reduce social distancing, respectively. Second, ethnic minority group mem-
bers were significantly more disengaged from police than the non-minority group (Weit-
zer and Brunson (2009) also revealed that African American youth are more likely to be
disengaged from US police than white youth). Third, we demonstrated that those who
were more likely to be disengaged were also more likely to question the legitimacy of the
law. Finally, disengagement levels were found to mediate the impact of procedural justice
on cooperation levels among the minority group; procedural justice had a positive effect
on minority group cooperation with police, but this effect disappeared once their level
of disengagement was taken into account. Such a finding shows that social distancing
and, in particular, disengagement levels are important for determining whether proce-
dural justice will be effective or ineffective for shaping minority group members’ will-
ingness to cooperate with police. These findings also support Braithwaite’s (2010) claim
that disengaged people are particularly difficult to manage in a regulatory context and
they point to the value of considering Braithwaite’s social distancing framework in fu-
ture procedural justice research.

Policy implications and conclusion

This research has aimed to provide insight into the contingencies that surround the
effectiveness of procedural justice in securing voluntary cooperation with police. The pre-
sumption to date has been that procedural justice ‘works’ across both majority and mi-
nority groups. Our findings, while small-scale, suggest that some groups will not
cooperate with institutions if they question the legitimacy of the laws they enforce. In fact,
such views can generate social distancing and can undermine the very strategies that are
seen as effective in building support for institutional authorities such as the police.

Such a finding, however, does not imply that police need to utilize harsh and insen-
sitive methods to achieve cooperation when dealing with ethnic minorities who question
our underlying system of laws and rules. Importantly, police need to examine whether
laws and policies are being deployed against minority groups in a way that generates dis-
engagement and undermines the law’s legitimacy. If the history of police and ethnic
group interactions has been largely negative, with laws used to over-police particular
ethnic groups (e.g. Pakistanis in the context of terrorism), then any attempt by police
to engage these groups may be judged with suspicion. Hence, procedural justice may be
counterproductive partly because of the levels of disengagement and distrust towards
the motives of the police given past experiences and encounters. Add to this mix neg-
ative perceptions of the laws and policies used to police them and experiences of social
exclusion that ethnic people can encounter given their marginal and minority group

UNDERSTANDING COOPERATION WITH POLICE IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY

197

status and you have a recipe for poor relationships and social distancing that makes it
difficult for authorities to build legitimacy and secure cooperation.

Police themselves cannot directly shape policy and laws. However, we suggest that po-
licing approaches that not only aim to treat citizens more politely and fairly, but also ac-
knowledge potential biases in the law by providing different community groups with an
opportunity to shape decision making and the style of policing that they desire in their
own neighbourhoods may be a way that police can more effectively shape minorities’ will-
ingness to engage with police and help them combat crime in their communities.

Funding

Australian Research Council (DP0987792, DP1093960).

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Appendix 1: Individual Survey Questions Used to Construct the Scales of Interest in the Present
Study

Procedural justice

� Police treat all people fairly
� Police treat everyone equally
� Police treat people with dignity and respect
� Police listen to people before making decisions
� Police are always polite when dealing with people
� All citizens are treated politely by police

Police legitimacy

� I respect police
� I trust police
� I have confidence in police
� I am proud of my police force
� I have a great deal of confidence in the police as an organization

Law legitimacy

� My own feelings about what is right and wrong usually agree with police rules and
policies

� My own feelings about what is right and wrong usually agree with the laws that are
enforced by the police

� The laws police enforce are generally consistent with the views of ordinary Australians
about what is right and wrong

� I agree with many of the values and rules that define what the police stand for
� The laws of our criminal justice system are generally consistent with the views of or-

dinary Australians about what is right and wrong

Cooperation

If the situation arose, how likely would you be to . . .

� Call police to report a crime
� Help police to find someone suspected of committing a crime by providing them with

information
� Report dangerous or suspicious activities to police
� Willingly assist police if asked

MURPHY AND CHERNEY

200

Social distancing scales

Commitment

� Overall, I am committed to doing the right thing by police
� Overall, I obey police with good will
� Following police decisions is a responsibility that should be willingly accepted by all

Australians
� I feel a moral obligation to obey police

Resistance

� It is impossible to satisfy the requirements of the police completely
� It’s important not to let police push you around
� As a society we need more people willing to take a stand against police
� If the police get tough with me, I will not cooperate with them

Disengagement

� I don’t care if I am NOT doing the right thing by police
� I personally don’t think that there is much the police can do to me to make me obey

the law if I don’t want to
� I don’t really know what the police expect of me and I’m not about to ask
� If I find out that I am not doing what the police want, I’m not going to lose any sleep

over it

Appendix 2: Regression Analysis Showing Predictors of ‘Police Legitimacy’

Predictor B SEB b r2
part

(Constant) 3.95 0.12
Age 0.00 0.00 0.01
Ethnicity (0 = non-minority; 1 = minority) –0.01 0.05 –0.01
Sex (0 = female; 1 = male) 0.13 0.04 0.09*** 0.01
Income 0.00 0.00 –0.01
Education –0.02 0.01 –0.06* 0.00
Police contact –0.01 0.01 –0.02
Procedural justice (PJ) 0.61 0.03 0.52*** 0.22
Law legitimacy 0.33 0.04 0.23*** 0.04
R2 0.44
Adjusted R2 0.43
F 82.58***
Df 8,851

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. UNDERSTANDING COOPERATION WITH POLICE IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY 201

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182

Author’s Note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James Hawdon, 654 McBryde
Hall, Department of Sociology (MC 0137), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061; e-mail: hawdonj@vt.edu.

Police Quarterly
Volume 11 Number 2

June 2008 182-201
© 2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/1098611107311852
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Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital,
and

Policing Styles

A Theoretical Statement
James Hawdon
Virginia Tech

There currently is no consensus about why attitudes toward police vary by neighbor-
hood. An unexplored explanation is that resident trust of police and perceptions of
police legitimacy may depend on neighborhood levels of social capital. This article
considers the relationships among trust, legitimacy, procedural justice, social capital,
and policing styles. Treating trust and legitimacy as conceptually distinct, how neigh-
borhood levels of social capital influence these perceptions and the style of policing
that is most likely to promote these perceptions are discussed. Issues concerning the
measurement of trust and legitimacy are also considered.

Keywords: trust; legitimacy; policing; social capital; community policing

Effective policing requires citizen cooperation (Alpert, Dunham, & Piquero, 1998;
Cordner, 1997; Eck & Rosenbaum, 1994; Greene & Pelfrey, 1997; Skogan,

1998). To stimulate such cooperation, many policing initiatives attempt to make
police “part of the community” (Hawdon & Ryan, 2003). Integrating police into the
community can be difficult, however, especially in communities with a history of
poor resident-police relations (Grinc, 1994; Parker, Onyekwuluje, & Murty, 1995;
Sadd & Grinc, 1994). One means of improving resident cooperation with police is
to increase residents’ perceptions of police legitimacy and trustworthiness (Hawdon,
Ryan, & Griffin, 2003; Stoutland, 2001; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 1990; Tyler
& Huo, 2002).

A growing body of literature supports the claim that resident perceptions of police
trustworthiness and legitimacy are critical for cooperative relations between residents
and officers (see, e.g., Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). Although the existing research is com-
pelling, it is theoretically incomplete and underspecified. First, much of the research
on citizen trust of police and perceptions of police legitimacy conflates the concepts of
trust and legitimacy. While these concepts are interrelated, they are conceptually
distinct and can be analytically separated. Second, the existing literature does not

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Hawdon / Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles 183

consider how trust and legitimacy operate within different social settings. There cur-
rently is no consensus about why attitudes toward the police vary by neighborhood
(see Brown & Benedict, 2002). An unexplored plausible explanation is that trust and
legitimacy may be dependent on neighborhood levels of social capital. Third, the
existing literature argues that issues of procedural justice are critical for establishing
perceptions of trust and legitimacy (see Stoutland, 2001; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;
Tyler, 2004; Tyler & Huo, 2002). However, researchers and theorists may have mis-
specified the causal direction among these concepts. Finally, the policing style that
is most effective in promoting a sense of legitimacy will likely depend on the larger
social environment in which the policing occurs. Existing literature fails to discuss
this potential relationship. This article addresses these gaps in the existing literature
and offers theoretical predictions concerning the role of legitimacy and trust in dif-
ferent types of neighborhoods. Moreover, predictions are made concerning the style
of policing that is likely to best promote a sense of procedural justice in each type of
neighborhood.

The argument proceeds in seven stages. To begin, I review the role of trust and
legitimacy in creating positive police-resident relationships. I then discuss trust and
legitimacy and argue that these are analytically and conceptually distinct. I next
consider the causal direction between perceptions of legitimacy and perceptions of
procedural justice. In the fourth section, I briefly review the concepts of bridging and
bonding capital at the neighborhood level. I discuss the various styles of policing in
the fifth section. I then outline how neighborhood levels of social capital can influence
perceptions of trust and legitimacy at the individual level and determine the style of
policing that is most likely to promote these perceptions. Finally, I address issues of
measuring the concepts of trust and legitimacy.

Theoretical Issues

Trust, Legitimacy, and Resident-Police Relations

There is a consensus among researchers that citizen perceptions of police trust-
worthiness and legitimacy increase the willingness of residents to cooperate with
police and comply with the law (Sherman, 1997; Stoutland, 2001; Sunshine & Tyler,
2003; Tyler, 1990; Tyler & Huo, 2002). For example, in a sample of New York City
residents, perceptions of legitimacy and trustworthiness were positively associated
with cooperating with police even when factors such as education, income, and eth-
nicity were controlled (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). Perceptions of legitimacy can also
increase resident compliance with the law (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 1990;
Tyler & Huo, 2002). Using logic similar to Hirschi’s (1969) regarding his concept of
“belief,” Tyler argues that if people believe the police are legitimate, they will engage
in self-regulatory behaviors and conform to the law. There is evidence to support this

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claim. In a longitudinal study conducted in Oakland and Los Angeles, Tyler and Huo
concluded, “if people generally viewed legal authorities as legitimate, they were
more likely to indicate that they followed the law in their everyday lives” (p. 106).
The self-regulation that derives from viewing the police as legitimate is distinct from
perceptions of risk of being caught and punished for misbehavior (Sunshine & Tyler,
2003; Tyler, 1990; Tyler & Huo, 2002).

There is also a consensus that perceived trustworthiness and legitimacy of the
police increases when officers conduct their business in a manner that promotes
“procedural justice” (Matrofski, Snipes, & Supina, 1996; Paternoster, Brame, Bachman,
& Sherman, 1997; Sherman, 1997; Tyler, Boeckmann, Smith, & Huo, 1997; Tyler &
Huo, 2002; Tyler & Wakslak, 2004). For example, Sunshine and Tyler (2003) found
that “procedural fairness,” measured by items such as the police “treat everyone in your
neighborhood with dignity and respect,” produced the strongest effect on perceptions
of police legitimacy. The magnitude of this effect far exceeded the influence of
resident perceptions of police performance, assessments of “distributive justice,” or
any demographic characteristic of the residents. Tyler and Huo (2002) report similar
findings among Oakland and Los Angeles residents. The greatest perceived reduction
in serious crime in Chicago occurred in districts where residents believed police were
responsive to their concerns (see Sherman, 1997). In Milwaukee, repeat domestic
violence was lowest among arrestees who thought police treated them respectfully
(Paternoster et al., 1997).

There is also a consensus, although not as widespread, that community policing,
with its emphasis on seeking resident input and “getting to know” the community,
increases perceptions of procedural justice more than traditional policing does. A
growing body of evidence supports the claim that perceptions of the police are influ-
enced by resident contact with police (Cheurprakobkit, 2000; Cordner & Jones, 1995;
Hawdon et al., 2003; Paternoster et al., 1997; Stoutland, 2001; Tyler & Huo, 2002),
and community policing aims at increasing positive police-resident contacts. Community
policing reduces complaints about police (Kessler, 1999), increases officer-initiated
investigations (Kane, 2000), and generally improves relations between residents and
police (Greene, 1999; Skogan, 1994; Skogan & Hartnett, 1997).

Finally, demographic characteristics influence perceptions of police. Of all demo-
graphic characteristics, ethnicity produces the strongest effect on perceptions. Several
studies indicate that whites trust police more than Blacks or Hispanics (Ackerman
et al., 2001; Brown & Benedict, 2002; Cole, 1999; Hawdon et al., 2003; Norris,
Fielding, Kemp, & Fielding, 1992; Seron, Pereira, & Kovath, 2004; Sunshine & Tyler,
2003). Norris et al. (1992) note that of all groups, Black youth tend to have the most
negative and hostile feelings toward police (see also Fine et al., 2003), although the
majority of Black residents hold positive attitudes toward police (Regulus, Taylor, &
Jackson, 2001). In addition to ethnicity, income and age are positively related and edu-
cation is inversely related to perceptions of police legitimacy (Brown & Benedict,
2002; Hawdon et al., 2003; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003).

184 Police Quarterly

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Hawdon / Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles 185

Given this literature, the links between policing, resident perceptions of proce-
dural justice, perceptions of police legitimacy, and resident cooperation with police
appear straightforward. The basic model is that community-policing tactics increase
resident perceptions of procedural justice. This increase in procedural justice enhances
perceptions of police legitimacy. In turn, residents who perceive police as being
legitimate are more likely to cooperate with the police and comply with the law.
Although this process allegedly holds regardless of the demographic characteristics
of residents, blacks, youth, and the poor will hold officers in less esteem and withhold
their cooperation from officers more than White, older adults, and the middle and
upper classes do, all else being equal.

Although the existing research is compelling, it is incomplete. Most importantly,
much of the research on citizen trust of police and perceptions of police legitimacy
combines the concepts of trust and legitimacy. For example, Tyler (1990, p. 25; also
see Tyler & Huo, 2002; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003) defines legitimacy as the “accep-
tance by people of the need to bring their behavior into line with the dictates of an
external authority.” Yet, the operational definition of legitimacy is “the perceived
obligation to obey the directives of a legal authority, trust in the institution of policing
and in individual police officers in one’s neighborhood, and affective feelings toward
the police” (see Sunshine & Tyler, 2003, p. 539). The measure of legitimacy includes
items such as “the police can be trusted to make decisions that are right for the
people in your neighborhood” and “the police in your neighborhood are generally
honest” (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003, p. 540), which tap resident trust in the specific officers
who patrol their neighborhoods. However, the measure also includes items such as
“you should accept the decisions made by police, even if you think they are wrong,”
and “disobeying the police is seldom justified.” These items tap the acceptance of the
policing institutions as legitimate more than trust. I argue that trust and legitimacy
are not the same phenomena and should be treated as discrete concepts. Trust and
legitimacy are analogous to what Tyler and Kerstetter (1994) call personal and
professional moral authority, respectively.

Reconsidering Trust and Legitimacy

Legitimacy, at least that which is based on rational grounds, rests on a belief in
the legality of enacted rules and the right of those in authority to issue commands
(Weber, 1978). Weber states:

In the case of legal authority, obedience is owed to the legally established impersonal
order. It extends to the persons exercising the authority of office under it by virtue of
the formal legality of their commands and only within the scope of authority of the
office. (pp. 215-216)

Thus, obedience is due not to the person who holds the authority but to the impersonal
social order that granted him or her that position. The individual’s authority applies only

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within a specified sphere of competence that has been defined as part of the division
of labor, and the means of compulsion at his or her disposal “are clearly defined and
their use is subject to definite conditions” (Weber, 1978, p. 218). The legitimate
authority of an individual officer is therefore based on that officer occupying a role
within the institution of policing. It is the institution that is viewed as legitimate or
not, not the individual occupying the position.

Conversely, “trust” deals with the behavior of a specific individual. Trust is the belief
that a person occupying a specific role will perform that role in a manner consistent
with the socially defined normative expectations associated with that role (i.e., what
sociologists call the actual role). Trust deals with specific individuals occupying
specific social roles. For example, a wife trusts her husband if she believes he will
act in a manner consistent with the actual role of “husband.” That is, the wife believes
her husband will be faithful, and that he will be a confidante, friend, and companion.
Yet, this wife’s trust is specific. Although she may trust her nonmedically trained
husband in the role of husband, she would not trust him in the role of thoracic surgeon
when she needs open-heart surgery. Trust is therefore role-dependent and role-specific.

Applying this insight to the police, an officer will be “trusted” when a resident
believes he or she will behave in a manner consistent with the actual role of police offi-
cer. The public expects officers to behave like professional officers, which includes
performing their duties “within a set of fair, public, and accountable guidelines” (Seron
et al., 2004, p. 666; also see Weitzer & Tuch, 2004; see Deakin, 1988 for a detailed
discussion of police professionalism). If the officer performs in such a manner, he or
she will be “trusted” as an officer. Citizens do not simply grant officers trust; instead,
officers earn trust through their behaviors. As Tyler and Kerstetter (1994, p. 46) note,
“each police officer . . . builds his or her own reputation within the community and
does not receive deference merely by holding a particular office.”

Therefore, legitimacy applies to a role position within the impersonal social
order; trust applies to whether or not the behavior of an individual conforms to the
social expectations concerning the role he or she occupies. The role is legitimate; the
individual is trusted. Thus, it is possible to “trust” that an officer will be honest, fair
in the administration of justice, and treat residents with respect without believing that
an officer has the “legitimate authority” to dispense justice. For example, the “anti-police”
sentiments found among residents in some neighborhoods may reflect a rejection of
the institution of policing rather than the rejection of a specific officer. A specific
officer may be well liked and trusted extensively. The “police,” however, may be
considered “thugs” or “corrupt.” Conversely, a resident may consider the institution
of policing as legitimate but not trust an individual officer. The news periodically
reminds us that “bad cops” exist and that not all officers can be trusted; however,
most residents still consider the institution of policing to be legitimate (Ackerman
et al., 2001; Brown & Benedict, 2002; Regulus et al., 2001).

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Legitimacy and Procedural Justice

Recognizing the concepts of trust and legitimacy as analytically distinct, we must
consider if the causal direction between perceptions of procedural justice and legiti-
macy is correct. Perceiving the institution of policing to be legitimate may lead to per-
ceptions of procedural justice rather than procedural justice leading to perceptions of
legitimacy. Thus, compared to those who do not accept the police as possessing legit-
imate authority, those who are disposed to believe in the legitimacy of the police may
consider their procedural tactics and outcomes to be just, even if the tactics are less
than “professional.” Moreover, such people are more likely to trust individual officers,
even if past personal experiences have been less than trust producing. These people are
also likely to cooperate with police, even if they do not trust individual officers or
anticipate a favorable outcome because of their efforts. Conversely, those who are dis-
posed to doubting the legitimate authority of the police are more likely to view an
encounter with police as being “unjust” and less likely to trust an individual officer,
regardless of the officer’s objective behavior. In addition, such a person is unlikely to
cooperate with police, even if a criminal personally victimizes him or her.

Research supports the argument that perceptions of legitimacy may cause per-
ceptions of procedural justice. For example, Brandl, Frank, Worden, and Bynum
(1999, p. 129) found “global attitudes toward the police influence evaluations of the
police in particular contact situations.” Thus, a person’s attitude toward the police
shapes whether he or she interprets police behaviors as just or unjust. Similarly,
Reisig and Chandek (2001) claim citizen expectations of police performance are as
important as the officers’ actual performance in determining citizen satisfaction with
police. This causal direction also makes logical sense. People are likely to form their
general impressions of the police before they have any personal contact with them.
These impressions, in turn, influence the interaction between the individual and the
police when such contact does occur. Individuals who hold the police in high regard
are more likely to act deferentially toward the officers. Officers, in turn, are then
more likely to treat individuals respectfully. Conversely, an individual who views
police with hostility is more likely to act defiantly toward them. The police, in turn,
will treat that individual more suspiciously and possibly less respectfully. All thin

gs

being equal, those who perceive the police as being legitimate are more likely to be
treated fairly by the police than those who view them suspiciously. This situation
may produce a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This argument is not to negate the importance of police behavior. On the contrary,
police also have preconceived perceptions of the individuals with whom they inter-
act. Research indicates that police alter their policing tactics in disadvantaged neigh-
borhoods. Police working in high-crime minority communities are more likely to use
coercion (Smith, 1986) and have higher rates of police misconduct (Kane, 2002).
Officers also behave differently depending on the characteristics of those with whom
they interact. For example, although Black, Hispanic, and White motorists are

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equally likely to be stopped, Black and Hispanic motorists are approximately three
times more likely than whites to be searched (Durose, Smith, & Langan, 2007).
Thus, officers apparently approach individuals differently depending on the neigh-
borhood they are patrolling and the individuals’ characteristics (Black, 1980; Wilson,
1968). When officers approach individuals respectfully, those individuals will likely
show deference toward the officers. Conversely, when officers approach individuals
suspiciously and accusatorially, those individuals will likely respond in a defensive
and possibly disrespectful manner. As Drury, Stott, and Farsides (2003) argue, police
perceptions can lead to tactics that ironically create the very hostility that the police
were seeking to avoid.

Thus, there is likely a reciprocal relationship between perceptions of legitimacy
and perceptions of procedural justice. Moreover, the perceptions of an officer need
to be included in the model relating legitimacy, procedural justice, and cooperation
with police. Existing research has not considered the possibility of these reciprocal
effects nor the potential effects of an officer’s perceptions.

Trust, Legitimacy, and Social Capital

Separating the concepts of trust and legitimacy highlights another problem with
existing research. Despite evidence that neighborhood conditions influence resident
perceptions of police bias (see Weitzer & Tuch, 2005), existing studies do not ade-
quately consider the social environment in which evaluations of police trustworthi-
ness occur. Certain settings are more likely to engender positive interactions than are
others. We know the social environment influences policing tactics (Black, 1980; Kane,
2002; Smith, 1986; Wilson, 1968), and neighborhood conditions influence resident
perceptions of police (Brandl et al., 1999; Brown & Benedict, 2002; MacDonald &
Stokes, 2006; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998). However, existing models do not include
these insights in a theoretically consistent manner. For example, in their extensive
review of the literature, Brown and Benedict (2002, p. 556) state, “there is no consensus
about why attitudes toward the police vary by neighborhood.”

Most of the existing research that has considered neighborhood influences on
perceptions of police focus on structural characteristics of neighborhoods such as the
neighborhood’s ethnic composition or levels of poverty (e.g., Kane, 2005); however,
recently, MacDonald and Stokes (2006) found that depleted levels of perceived com-
munity social capital contribute to higher levels of distrust of local police. Although
these researchers measured social capital at the individual level, this research sug-
gests that aggregate levels of social capital may also influence resident perceptions
of police. Moreover, aggregate levels of social capital will likely moderate the rela-
tionship between policing styles and perceptions of procedural and outcome justice.
In addition, there is evidence that neighborhood conditions influence policing styles
(see, e.g., Klinger, 1997; Sampson, 1986; Schulenberg, 2003; Stark, 1987; Wells, Falcone,
& Rabe-Hemp, 2003; Wilson, 1968); thus, aggregate levels of social capital will likely

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moderate the relationship between policing styles and perceptions of procedural and
outcome justice. To build these theoretical links, I turn first to the literature on social
capital and then consider variations in policing styles.

On social capital. Social capital consists of “features of social organizations, such as
networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate action and cooperation for mutual benefit”
(Putnam, 1993, p. 35) and results in high levels of interpersonal trust and interaction,
and norms of aid and reciprocity, and high rates of civic participation (Putnam, 1993,
2000). Social capital, as conceptualized here, is an ecological characteristic and a
feature of the social structure, not of the individual actors within the social structure
(Lochner, Kawachi, & Kennedy, 1999). We are most interested in the trust dimension
of social capital.

Putnam and others distinguish between bonding and bridging capital (Brehm &
Rahn, 1997; Gittell & Vidal, 1998; Messner, Baumer, & Rosenfeld, 2004; Szreter,
2002; Uslaner, 2000). Bonding capital is the trust of specific others, such as friends,
coworkers, and neighbors. Conversely, bridging capital extends beyond one’s immedi-
ate social circles to others with whom one has no direct ties or few personal connec-
tions (Gittell & Vidal, 1998; Putnam, 2000). Bonding capital holds people together in
groups while bridging capital connects people across diverse groups. Bonding capital
is specific; bridging capital is generalized (Uslaner, 2000). Bonding capital is personal
and requires intimate contact; bridging capital connects to people, groups, and institu-
tions in the impersonal social order.

Noting the distinction between bonding and bridging capital allows us to tie these
concepts to perceptions of legitimacy, trust, and procedural justice at the individual
level. It is important to remember that bonding and bridging capital are characteris-
tics of a neighborhood while legitimacy, trust, and procedural justice are beliefs of
individuals.

Since bonding social capital is the connection among people within a group, it
produces its most profound influence on levels of trust. All else being equal,
members of aggregates that have high levels of bonding capital are likely to trust
individuals within their group. However, they are less likely to trust individuals who
are outside their immediate group. Members of aggregates with low levels of bond-
ing capital are often suspicious of everyone, including members of their immediate
group. In contrast, bridging capital relates to connections to the larger social order
and has its strongest effect on perceptions of legitimacy. In settings high in bridging
capital, individuals are likely to view the dominant institutions as being legitimate
since they are connected beyond their immediate group to the larger social order.
They are therefore likely to feel a part of that social order and a sense of responsi-
bility for people beyond their bonded group (Szreter, 2002). The members of such
groups will likely believe the institution of policing is legitimate. Conversely,
members of a low bridging capital group are more likely to view the larger social
order with suspicion and are less likely to adopt the dominant culture’s perspective

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that the social order, and the institutions that comprise it, are legitimate. Consequently,
they are less likely to view the institution of policing as being legitimate.

Next, those individuals living in neighborhoods with high levels of bridging
capital are more likely to define police behaviors as promoting procedural justice.
Conversely, those living in neighborhoods with low levels of bridging capital are less
likely to define police behaviors as promoting procedural justice. Bridging capital,
therefore, directly influences perceptions of legitimacy and indirectly influences per-
ceptions of procedural justice and resident willingness to cooperate with the police.
Bonding capital, however, has little influence on perceptions of legitimacy; however,
it directly influences the importance of officers’ behaviors in shaping perceptions of
trust and procedural justice. Thus, bonding capital indirectly influences resident
willingness to cooperate with the police.

While bonding capital most directly influences trust and bridging capital most
directly influences legitimacy, the combination of these two forms of social capital will
either amplify or reduce the effect each has on trust and legitimacy. The combinations
of social capital will also create specific social environments that will influence which
style of policing—the watchman, the legalistic, or the service style (Wilson, 1968)—
is most effective. After briefly reviewing these policing styles, I will consider how
each style would likely function in neighborhoods with various combinations of
bridging and bonding capital and, therefore, varying perceptions of police legitimacy
and trust.

Policing Styles

In his classic study of eight communities, James Q. Wilson (1968) identified three
styles of policing. These included the watchman (or order maintenance), the legalistic,
and the service style. These well-known policing styles are highlighted here. The
reader should remember that these are “ideal types” and that most police forces and
police officers employ aspects of all three styles. However, as Wilson and others have
argued, departments have unique cultures that emphasize one style over the others.

The watchman style. The watchman style of policing sees order maintenance
rather than law enforcement as the officer’s principal function. Although all officers
display a concern for order maintenance, “in a few places this style becomes the
operating code of the department” (Wilson, 1968, p. 140). In this style, administrators,
to the best of their abilities, influence officer discretion

by allowing them to ignore many common minor violations, especially traffic and juvenile
offenses, to tolerate, though gradually less so, a certain amount of vice and gambling, to
use the law more as a means of maintaining order than of regulating conduct, and to judge
the requirements of order differently depending on the character of the group in which the
infraction occurs (Wilson, 1968, p. 140).

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Hawdon / Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles 191

This style of policing maximizes officer discretion. Officers judge the seriousness
of legal violations “less by what the law says about (the infractions) than by their
immediate and personal consequences” (Wilson, 1968, p. 141). Thus, community leaders
are not arrested, minorities are “either ignored or arrested” and “private” affairs, unless
serious, are overlooked and handled informally (Wilson, 1968, pp. 141-142). In general,
officers are allowed and encouraged “to follow the path of least resistance” (Wilson,
1968, p. 144).

Because the watchman style of policing emphasizes order maintenance above law
enforcement, distributive justice is paramount when handling disorderly situations
(Wilson, 1968). Violators get what officers believe “they deserve” and what “they
deserve” has more to do with contextual factors—the time of the disorder, place where
the disorder occurs and personal characteristics of the person violating the norms—than
it does with the legal proscriptions concerning the behavior. Therefore, different nor-
mative and behavioral standards are applied to different groups, and what is “orderly”
varies by community and the characteristics of the person committing the offense.

The legalistic style. In contrast to the watchman style, in departments where the
legalistic style is predominant, administrators use what power they have to induce
officers “to handle commonplace situations as if they were matters of law enforcement
rather than order maintenance” (Wilson, 1968, p. 172). In legalistically oriented
departments, the abstract principles of law direct officer conduct and therefore limit
officer discretion. The police will apply the normative values the law prescribes as the
single standard of community conduct. That is, officers are likely to apply universal
standards and do not consider how norms may vary across neighborhoods or groups.
As a result, they typically detain and arrest juvenile offenders, issue numerous traffic
citations, and vigorously combat vice crimes. In legalistic departments, officers “make
a large number of misdemeanor arrests even when, as with petty larceny, the public
order has not been breached” (Wilson, 1968, p. 172).

Because the emphasis in legalistic departments is on law enforcement, officers are
encouraged to view justice as solely based on individual culpability (Wilson, 1968).
According to a legalistic model of policing, the characteristics of the offender or the cul-
tural environment in which the act occurs should not influence the handling of a given
situation. Instead, “the only just distinctions that may be made among (offenders) are
on the basis of their behavior in areas defined by the law” (Wilson, 1968, p. 188).
Wilson recognizes that the standards legalistic officers actually use in handling cases
“will rarely be fully in accord with the standard required by the legalistic department,
. . . such departments do have an effect on police behavior” (Wilson, 1968, p. 189).

Legalistic departments also emphasize professionalism. Dress codes are strictly
enforced; officers are strongly encouraged to treat the public courteously; technical
efficiency and “modernizing” police work are highly valued (Wilson, 1968). These
departments try to produce as much output as possible, no matter how it is valued.

The service style. Finally, in the service style of policing, officers take seriously
all requests for either law enforcement or order maintenance. Unlike officers with a

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192 Police Quarterly

watchman style, service-oriented officers respond to requests despite the character-
istics of the requester or the environment in which the request is made. However,
they are less likely to make an arrest or impose other formal sanctions than officers
with a legalistic orientation. In service-oriented departments, “the police intervene
frequently but not formally” (Wilson, 1968, p. 200). Service style policing uses
decentralized administrative units such as substations or precinct stations. In addition,
service style policing is more likely than the other styles to use foot patrols instead
of motorized patrols. These tactical strategies are designed to keep the department
small, local, and “close to the people.” Service-oriented departments have high
“regard for the opinion of the community” and emphasize community and public
relations (Wilson, 1968, p. 203). Administrators and beat officers try to develop
“various control procedures that make service a major concern to officers at every
rank” (Wilson, 1968, p. 203).

Although advocates claim community policing includes more than the service
style of policing (see Stevens, 2001, 2002), the service style is similar to what we
now call “community policing.” Like the service style department, the philosophy of
community policing endorses citizen input, a broadening of police function beyond
crime fighting and law enforcement, and personal service that tailors police efforts
based on local norms and individual needs. Strategically, community policing
emphasizes crime prevention based on face-to-face interaction among permanently
assigned officers and residents (Cordner, 1997; Kelling & Moore, 1998; Stevens,
2001, 2002). Thus, like the service style of policing, the purpose of community
policing is to emphasize “non-adversarial problem solving in lieu of traditional
strategies which conflict with normative structures in the neighborhood” (Alpert
et al., 1998, p. 319). Community policing attempts to reinforce the area’s informal
social controls (Wilson & Kelling, 1982).

Although Wilson’s typology is dated, it still captures the major policing styles used
in the United States (see, e.g., Peak, 2003; Walker, 1999). As previously mentioned,
most departments and officers use a combination of styles; however, departments and
officers do adopt a dominant style. By the mid-1990s, community policing became
the “dominant strategy of policing” in the United States (Cordner, 1997, p. 451);
nevertheless, variety in policing styles still exist, especially in smaller and nonurban
departments (Maguire, Kuhns, Uchida, & Cox, 1997).1

Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles

The connections among neighborhood levels of social capital, policing styles, resi-
dent perceptions of the legitimacy of the policing institution, and resident perceptions
of trust in specific officers can now be explicated. Recalling the difference between
bonding (trust of specific others) and bridging capital (trust in those with whom one
has few personal connections), there are four possible combinations that are found
within neighborhoods. These combinations are neighborhoods with (a) high bridging
and bonding capital, (b) low bridging and bonding capital, (c) high bridging and low

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Hawdon / Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles 193

bonding capital, and (d) low bridging and high bonding capital. How would percep-
tions of legitimacy and trust likely vary in each of these neighborhoods and which
policing style would mostly likely be effective in each of these neighborhoods?
Moreover, where are issues of procedural and distributive justice most important?

High bridging and bonding capital. Being connected to the impersonal social
order, members of a neighborhood with high levels of bridging capital likely con-
sider that order legitimate. Given this disposition, they will approach an individual
officer with an initial sense of trust. The individual officer will enjoy this general
sense of trust unless his or her behavior proves that this trust was unwarranted. That
is, the officer must “lose” the residents’ trust. However, given the close ties among
the residents, as exemplified through their high levels of bonding capital, it would be
relatively easy for an officer to lose the residents’ trust. Because of the tight networks
among residents, residents would quickly learn about any officer misconduct. Thus,
although initially individual officers will enjoy a high level of trust among the resi-
dents, the subsequent behavior of an individual officer patrolling the area is critically
important. In such a setting, the emphasis is primarily on treating residents respect-
fully. That is, the emphasis is on procedural justice (Stoutland, 2001). Provided an
officer behaves as an officer is supposed to behave, he or she will likely be trusted.
Professionalism is of the utmost importance. The style of policing that most protects
an officer’s high initial levels of trust is therefore a dispassionate, yet courteous, style
of traditional legalistic policing.

Although traditional legalistic policing would likely be the most appreciated style
in high bridging and bonding neighborhoods, the high levels of legitimacy afforded
the office of the police would likely make any style of policing, provided it was
implemented with respect to the general professional guidelines police follow,
acceptable to residents. Given the police office is generally accepted, individual officers
would likely enjoy a level of professional authority. That is, residents would likely
defer to the judgment of the officer because the office he or she occupies is perceived
to be legitimate. Nevertheless, the professionalism of the officer is of utmost impor-
tance, and the legalistic style of policing advocates a professional-client approach to
policing, more so than other styles.

High bridging, low bonding. Residents of high-bridging, low-bonding neighbor-
hoods are connected to the impersonal social order. They are therefore likely to view
the office of the police as legitimate. Moreover, because of this perceived legitimacy,
individual officers are likely trusted initially. However, since this type of community
is not internally bonded, the behavior of any given officer has less influence on the
overall levels of trust for individual officers. Any misconduct in which a specific
officer may engage is likely to remain unknown to most members of the unbounded
neighborhood. Therefore, it is harder for the police to lose the residents’ trust. In this
setting, perceptions of procedural justice are less important than perceptions of outcome
justice (i.e., effectively controlling crime). Thus, provided the neighborhood remains

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194 Police Quarterly

safe, few residents will know—or likely care—how this safety was achieved. Even if
a resident’s sense of procedural justice was violated, other residents would not likely
hear about this violation. What they will see is that the police are effectively con-
trolling crime. As previous research indicates, residents of high-crime neighbor-
hoods desire less crime and more police protection, and many residents in these
neighborhoods support aggressive enforcement, including violations of civil liber-
ties, if such actions result in a safer neighborhood (Rosenbaum, 1994; Sampson &
Raudenbush, 1999; Stoutland, 2001). Therefore, provided the neighborhood remains
relatively safe, residents will likely perceive the police institution as legitimate and any
given officer will be trusted, at least initially. In these neighborhoods, police visibility,
regardless of the style of policing, would likely be important since it influences
perceptions of outcome justice (Hawdon et al., 2003).

Low bridging, low bonding. Because of the low levels of bridging capital in these
neighborhoods, most residents are relatively unconnected to the impersonal social
order. Thus, many residents will question the legitimacy of the institution of policing.
Given this, individual officers often begin their relationship with the neighborhood
in a disadvantaged position of high suspicion and low trust. Yet, because of the low levels
of bonding capital, the residents of these neighborhoods may not trust each other
either. As in any low-bonding capital neighborhood, residents’ perceptions of outcome
justice are paramount. Violations of procedural justice, although not recommended,
could go unnoticed by most residents. However, unlike the high-bridging, low-bonding
neighborhood, the low-bridging, low-bonding neighborhood is likely to be more dis-
advantaged and may suffer from higher crime rates. Thus, promoting the perception
of outcome justice is difficult in these areas. In this environment, an order mainte-
nance style that diffuses disorderly situations that may escalate to criminal activities
would likely be the most effective type of policing.

Low bridging, high bonding. These neighborhoods will be the most difficult to
police. The low levels of bridging capital will dampen the perceived legitimacy of the
institution of policing. In addition, the high bonding among the residents creates an
environment that protects “insiders” from “outsiders.” Officers, as outsiders, are not
likely to be trusted, further deteriorating the lack of legitimacy with which they enter
a situation. In fact, officers in these neighborhoods are likely to be approached with
latent, if not manifest, hostility. They are outsiders who represent a perceived illegiti-
mate impersonal social order. They have “no business” being here and “no right” to
impose their will on residents. In these situations, the emphasis is primarily on issues
of procedural justice. Officers must “earn” the residents’ trust by respecting not only
individual residents, but also the neighborhood’s culture and traditions. Residents of
this tightly knit neighborhood will quickly share stories of any officer misconduct or
disrespectful behavior, thereby further eroding any sense of legitimacy in the police
as an institution. The legalistic style of policing, with its militaristic approach and
close association with the dominant social order (Wilson, 1968), will likely violate

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Hawdon / Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles 195

the residents’ sense of community. An officer employing a legalistic style of policing
would potentially be seen as violating procedural justice by imposing the impersonal
social order’s normative standards on the residents. As Wilson (1968) notes, the
legalistic style often results in minorities and other disenfranchised groups barring
the brunt of law enforcement. Since disenfranchised groups often have higher crime
rates, they will frequently experience the law’s power (Black, 1980; Slovak, 1986;
Wilson, 1968, p. 172). The greater use of law in poor neighborhoods will often “be
experienced as harassment” (Wilson, 1968, p. 172).

In these neighborhoods, community policing will not only be the most effective
style of policing but possibly the only style that will not inflame the already tense
police-resident relationship. Even if it is difficult to establish, community policing is
the best approach for winning the trust of residents. Table 1 summarizes the pre-
dicted relationships just described.

Methodological Issues

Although the theoretical discussion generates the above specific hypotheses, it is
currently impossible to test the model with existing datasets. Sampling and mea-
surement issues must be addressed before the model proposed herein can be tested.

The proposed model specifies relationships across levels of analysis. That is,
neighborhood-level characteristics are predicted to influence individual-level out-
comes. Thus, to test the model properly, researchers must conduct hierarchical
analyses (individuals are nested in neighborhoods). Although hierarchical tech-
niques are now commonly used, the expense of collecting data from numerous
neighborhoods is prohibitive. To generate a useful data set, a sufficient sample of
residents that can reasonably represent the neighborhood must be collected from
several neighborhoods. Then, researchers must collect data from a sufficient number
of neighborhoods to ensure that the sample is reasonably representative and the
analysis has sufficient statistical power (see Twisk, 2006 for a discussion of power
analyses and correction factors for multilevel studies). Although it is unlikely that we
will ever have sufficient resources to gather a nationally representative sample of
neighborhoods, a sample of neighborhoods such as that collected for the Project on
Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods could provide the needed data to
begin testing the model. This sample, which has been widely used, included 8,782
residents in 343 “neighborhood clusters” (see Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997 for
a discussion of the PHDCN data). Unfortunately, this data set does not offer measures
of all of the concepts discussed in this article.

In addition to an adequate sample, researchers must be sensitive to measurement
issues if they are to test the proposed model. Specifically, they must carefully measure
perceptions of police legitimacy and perceptions of trust in the police. As argued earlier,
the concepts of trust and legitimacy are conceptually distinct; however, most commonly
used measures of “trust and legitimacy” (see Sunshine & Tyler, 2003) include items

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196

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Hawdon / Legitimacy, Trust, Social Capital, and Policing Styles 197

such as “you should accept the decisions made by police, even if you think they are
wrong.” Such items reflect the acceptance of the policing institutions as legitimate
more than trust and therefore conflate the concepts. Consequently, new, more carefully
constructed, measures are needed.

The measure of perceptions of police legitimacy should include items that reflect
the extent to which residents believe the institution of policing has legitimate authority
to issue commands and expect obedience. Thus, a proposed measure of perceptions
of police legitimacy would include items such as (a) “you should accept the decisions
made by police officers, even if you think they are wrong,” (b) “disobeying the police
is seldom justified,” (c) “communities work best when people follow the directives
of the police,” (d) “in general, the police are corrupt,” (e) “the police should always
be respected,” (f) “the police have a right to tell people what to do,” and (g) “the
police have no business telling people how to live their lives.” Sunshine and Tyler
(2003) use the first three items to measure legitimacy. The additional items should
be included to tap better the central aspect of legitimacy: the police’s legal authority
to issue commands and expect obedience.

In contrast to the measure of legitimacy, a measure of trust of the police should include
items that reflect the extent to which residents believe individual officers perform their
role as they should. Consequently, trust of the police should be measured directly by
using a question such as “on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you trust the police in
your neighborhood?” In addition to this direct question, the measure should include
items such as (a) “the police generally make the right decisions for the people in your
neighborhood,” (b) “the police in your neighborhood are generally honest,” and (c) “in
general, the police in your neighborhood are upstanding officers.” These items specif-
ically reference the respondent’s neighborhood so his or her attention is drawn to spe-
cific officers instead of the larger institution of policing.

Although it is possible that trust and legitimacy are conceptually distinct, they
may not be analytically distinct. That is, the correlation between the two concepts
may be so high that the concepts would need to be treated as a single construct in any
statistical analysis. Although this analytic overlap is possible, existing data cannot
determine if this is the case. Only by carefully operationalizing the concepts can
researchers determine if they are both conceptually and analytically distinct.

Conclusion

Although scholars and practitioners know that resident perceptions of trust and legit-
imacy influence their willingness to cooperate with the police, we lack an understanding
of how the social environment patterns resident perceptions. Noting that trust and
legitimacy are conceptually distinct and using the concepts of bridging and bonding
capital, I argue that neighborhood levels of social capital influence resident percep-
tions of the police. Then, I connect these insights to what is known about policing
styles to make predictions of which style of policing would be most effective in
generating perceptions of trust and legitimacy in specific types of neighborhoods.

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198 Police Quarterly

Finally, I address some of the issues researchers will confront when attempting to
test the accuracy of the proposed model.

Although testing the model will not be easy or inexpensive, it would be worthwhile.
Given the massive body of literature that demonstrates social capital’s influence on
crime, community development, child development, neighborhood mortality rates and
community health, access to health care, and a host of other individual and collective
problems (see, e.g., Saegert, Thompson, & Warren, 2001), it is likely social capital also
influences resident perceptions of the police. If this theory is useful in furthering our
understanding of how neighborhood conditions influence perceptions of procedural
justice, it will not only fill a major gap in the literature, but it will also have significant
consequences for police operations. By understanding which policing style generates
positive resident views of police in various types of neighborhoods, officers will be
freed from a “one-size-fits-all” model of policing. Instead, they can tailor their policing
to the neighborhoods they patrol. Community policing, currently considered the best style
of policing, is expensive. However, it may not be necessary to implement community
policing in certain neighborhoods where less expensive styles may be equally effective.
If this model is accurate, law enforcement will be able to increase resident cooperation,
induce law-abiding behavior, and efficiently target resources.

Note

1. Based on a 1994 national sample, 80% of responding police agencies and two thirds of sheriffs had
implemented “community policing” programs (McEwen, 1995). However, even by the late 1990s, in
nearly 6,000 police departments that completed the COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Small Towns)
application, only 12% had a strategic plan for community policing, only 31% provided community policing
training for officers, and only 51% met with the community to explain crime prevention techniques. These
relatively low numbers came from small departments, but the majority of the nonrandom sample were
agencies that either practiced or wanted to practice community policing and were seeking federal funds
to support those activities (Maguire et al., 1997).

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James Hawdon is an associate professor of sociology at Virginia Tech. His research interests include the
sociology of policing, community structure and crime, and the sociology of drug use. In addition to his book
and articles on intergovernmental organizations, he has published several articles in the areas of crime, vio-
lence, deviance, and policing. His recent book, Drugs and Alcohol Consumption as Functions of Social
Structures, analyzes drug use from a cross-national and historic perspective and develops a sociological
theory of drug consumption. The book won the Adele Mellen Prize for Contributions to Scholarship.

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Crime & Delinquency
2015, Vol. 61(4) 610 –640

© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0011128714530548

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Article

Trust in the Police: The
Influence of Procedural
Justice and Perceived
Collective Efficacy

Justin Nix,1 Scott E. Wolfe,1 Jeff Rojek,1 and
Robert J. Kaminski1

Abstrac

t

Tyler’s process-based model of policing suggests that the police can enhance
their perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness in the eyes of the public
when they exercise their authority in a procedurally fair manner. To date,
most process-based research has focused on the sources of legitimacy while
largely overlooking trust in the police. The present study extends this line
of literature by examining the sources of trust in the police. In particular,
emerging research has revealed that neighborhood context influences
attitudes toward the police but much less attention has been given to
exploring the role individuals’ perceptions of their neighborhood play in
shaping such evaluations. Therefore, the present study considers whether
individuals’ perceptions of collective efficacy serve as a social-psychological
cognitive orientation that influences levels of trust in the police. Using data
from a recently conducted mail survey of a random sample of 1,681 residents
from a metropolitan city, we find that procedural justice evaluations are a
primary source of trust in the police. At the same time, however, level of
perceived collective efficacy is positively associated with trust even after
accounting for procedural justice. The findings suggest that police procedural
fairness is vitally important to establishing trust from the public but peoples’

1University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

Corresponding Author:
Justin Nix, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina,
1305 Greene Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
Email: nix2@mailbox.sc.edu

530548 CADXXX10.1177/0011128714530548Crime & DelinquencyNix et al.
research-article2014

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Nix et al. 611

cognitive orientation toward their neighborhood context partially shapes
the level of trustworthiness they afford to the polic

e.

Keywords
policing, procedural justice, collective efficacy, trust, legitimacy

Tyler’s (1990, 2004; Tyler & Huo, 2002) theory of procedural justice—often
referred to as the process-based model of policing—suggests that the police
can enhance their perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness in the eyes of the
public by exercising authority in a procedurally fair manner. Establishing
legitimacy or trust represents a desirable alternative to using coercive force to
obtain compliance from citizens. Moreover, when citizens trust the police,
they are more likely to cooperate with them by reporting crimes as well as
informally enforcing societal norms. Empirical research offers support for
the process-based model: Individuals who believe police actions are proce-
durally fair are more likely to perceive them as a legitimate and trustworthy
institution (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Tyler (2005; Tyler
& Huo, 2002) also suggests that procedural justice influences normative
evaluations of the police (e.g., trust and legitimacy) net of other individual or
situational factors (see also, Gau, Corsaro, Stewart, & Brunson, 2012).

The process-based model of policing has received considerable research
attention over the past decade but two important areas remain open to empiri-
cal scrutiny. First, as Bottoms and Tankebe (2012) point out, there is no uni-
versally recognized definition of legitimacy. Researchers have typically
measured legitimacy as trust in the police and perceived obligation to obey
(Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 1990; Tyler & Huo, 2002); however, more
recent studies suggest that these constructs are theoretically and empirically
distinct and should therefore be treated as separate concepts (Gau, 2011,
2013; Reisig, Bratton, & Gertz, 2007). Despite such findings, the majority of
research has focused on legitimacy—much less attention has been given to
the sources of trust in the police. Given the evidence that evaluations of trust
and legitimacy are separate concepts yet part of the same process-based nor-
mative evaluation, examining the antecedents of trust in law enforcement is
important on both theoretical and policy-oriented grounds. Second, and most
important for our study, evidence exists demonstrating that neighborhood
context influences individuals’ attitudes toward the police (Reisig & Parks,
2000, 2003; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998). While important, the majority of
this literature focuses on compositional effects and neglects the potentially
important role that individuals’ perceptions of neighborhood conditions have
on their evaluations of legal actors. Recently Gau and her colleagues (2012)

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612 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

presented results showing that neighborhood context does not affect evalua-
tions of police legitimacy but individual perceptions of neighborhood cohe-
sion influence such evaluations. Thus, preliminary evidence suggests that the
cognitive orientation individuals have toward law enforcement may be par-
tially shaped by their perceptions of the environment in which they are situ-
ated. It is particularly important to examine such an influence on perceptions
of police trustworthiness considering the social-psychological underpinnings
of Tyler’s theory. If perceptions of neighborhood conditions are associated
with trust in the police, the question that remains is what role evaluations of
procedural justice play in the relationship. Tyler’s arguments would suggest
that individuals’ evaluations of police officer fairness should override the
effects of such extraneous variables, yet no research to date has been able to
examine this question.

The current study examines these issues using data from a recently col-
lected mail survey of a random sample of citizens from a mid-sized metropo-
lis in the southeastern United States (N = 1,681). Our analyses move the
current procedural justice literature forward in several ways. First, going
beyond prior process-based model research that typically examines evalua-
tions of legitimacy, we focus our analysis on the predictors of trust in the
police. Second, we determine whether perceptions of neighborhood collec-
tive efficacy affect individuals’ levels of trust in the police after accounting
for evaluations of procedural justice. Specifically, we consider whether per-
ceptions of procedural justice, as Tyler postulates, diminishes the effect of
other variables—including perceived collective efficacy—on trust. We con-
clude by discussing theoretical and policy implications as well as avenues for
future research.

The Process-Based Model of Policing

Being viewed as a legitimate and trustworthy authority is important to the
police because such normative evaluations lead to compliance, cooperation,
and empowerment from the public (Tyler, 1990). The police cannot be every-
where at once and, therefore, must rely heavily on voluntary compliance with
the law to maintain social order. In addition, cooperation from the public is
essential to the crime suppression function of the police. Citizens cooperate
with the police by reporting crimes, working together as a community to
enforce social norms, and supporting the allocation of public resources to
their local police department. Cooperation is especially important because it
increases the likelihood that citizens will comply with police decisions in the
long term (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Empowerment
involves the willingness of the public to accept police discretionary

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Nix et al. 613

judgments (e.g., about when to make an arrest rather than issue a citation).
The police are able to exercise discretion—especially regarding whether or
not to use physical force (Bittner, 1972)—only because the public has
empowered them to do so.

Tyler and Huo (2002) seem to suggest that the concept of trust is distinct
from legitimacy. In their influential study of trust of legal authorities, how-
ever, they go on to measure trust as one of two components of legitimacy (the
other being perceived obligation to obey). Scholars have recently questioned
the validity of this conceptualization of legitimacy and demonstrated that
trust and perceived obligation to obey do not load together onto a single fac-
tor (Gau, 2011, 2013; Reisig et al., 2007). Similarly, Tyler (2006) has noted
that the correlation between trust and obligation to obey tends to be small
(e.g., r = .26). Recently proposed conceptualizations of legitimacy have in
fact defended the exclusion of trust as a component of the concept. For exam-
ple, Jackson et al. (2012) define legitimacy as a sense of moral alignment
with the police in addition to a perceived obligation to obey. The police as an
institution are empowered by the public to maintain order and enforce laws.
Legitimacy, as Jackson and his colleagues suggest, partially hinges on the
degree to which the police and the public share common beliefs about the
maintenance of this social order (see also Tankebe, 2013).

Conversely, trust in the police involves a feeling that officers will exercise
their authority with the community’s best interest in mind. Tyler and Huo
(2002) state that, “[t]rust in a person’s motives or character refers to his or her
internal, unobservable characteristics that are inferred from his or her observ-
able actions” (p. 58). Trust is a particularly important concept with respect to
orientations toward law enforcement because citizens normally have limited
knowledge about the actions taken by police and lack expertise in judging
said actions (Tyler & Huo, 2002). The level of trust one has in the police is
based on “cues that communicate information about the intentions and char-
acter” of the police (Jackson et al., 2012, p. 4). Thus, trust evaluations serve
as a normative attitude regarding how benevolent law enforcement actions
are and can be held regardless of the amount of personal contact one has with
the police (Tyler & Huo, 2002). Paralleling arguments regarding legitimacy,
people are believed to comply and cooperate with the police because they
trust that officers will behave in predictable and acceptable ways. It is impor-
tant to note that one could view the police as a legitimate authority without
necessarily trusting certain officers (Hawdon, 2008). In the end, treating trust
as a distinct concept is supported on both theoretical and empirical grounds
(Gau, 2011, 2013; Reisig et al., 2007; Tyler, 2006). Accordingly, exploring
the correlates of trust evaluations is worthy of empirical inquiry (Hawdon,
2008; Jackson et al., 2012; Sargeant, Murphy, & Cherney, 2013; Tyler, 2005).

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614 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

Procedural justice theory recognizes that individuals place value on the
fairness of the procedures used to reach an outcome—oftentimes more so
than the fairness of the actual outcome (Thibaut & Walker, 1975).
Overwhelming evidence suggests that procedural justice is the main anteced-
ent of evaluations of police legitimacy (Gau, 2011, 2013; Gau et al., 2012;
Reisig et al., 2007; Tankebe, 2013; Tyler, 1990; Wolfe, 2011). Prior research
has focused primarily on legitimacy with less attention given to the sources
of trust. Existing theoretical arguments and empirical evidence stemming
mainly from Tyler’s work indicates that the same process-based model
applies to normative evaluations of trust in the police (Gau, 2011, 2013;
Reisig et al., 2007; Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Tyler (2005) found that
perceived police fairness exerts the strongest influence on the public’s level
of trust. This begs the question, “What do individuals regard as fair?” In part,
the answer varies depending on the particular situation. Tyler (2003) speci-
fies two key elements of fairness: quality of decision making and quality of
interpersonal treatment. When officers remain neutral and use objective rea-
soning to make decisions—as opposed to personal biases—citizens are more
likely to believe their decisions are fair. Likewise, being treated with dignity
and respect will lead citizens to feel an officer is being fair. A third element
emerges pertaining specifically to resolving disputes: participation in the
decision-making process (Tyler, 2005). Citizens who are involved in a dis-
pute value the opportunity to express their side of the story prior to any solu-
tion being reached. Officers who provide each of the involved parties with
this opportunity are more likely to be perceived as exercising their discretion
fairly. Regardless of the scenario, “authorities become more highly trusted
when they are seen to exercise their authority in fair ways” (Tyler, 2003, p.
299). In other words, officers who remain objective, respectful, and polite,
and provide citizens with an opportunity to express their views prior to mak-
ing a decision are more likely to be viewed as trustworthy in the eyes of the
public. Beyond Tyler’s own tests, relatively little empirical evidence exists
pertaining to the connection between procedural justice and trust in the
police—a gap addressed by the present study.

Another antecedent of trust is distributive justice, which focuses on per-
ceived fairness of the outcome rather than the process. According to distribu-
tive justice theories, individuals are more accepting of outcomes if they are
equal to those received by similarly situated others. As the name suggests,
individuals place importance on the equal distribution of justice across differ-
ent societal groups (Sarat, 1977). For instance, Tyler and Wakslak (2004)
found that perceived racial profiling by police officers is associated with
lower levels of public support for the police. Moreover, individuals in their
study who believed the police engage in profiling expressed less willingness

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Nix et al. 615

to comply with authorities. Tyler (2005) has also demonstrated that trust is
influenced by perceptions of distributive justice but procedural justice exerts
the strongest influence.

Finally, individual differences may influence levels of trust in the police.
For decades, scholars have pointed to the importance of demographic charac-
teristics such as race, gender, and age when examining attitudes toward the
police. Numerous studies have found that minorities have less favorable
opinions of the police than Whites (Engel, 2005; Wu, Sun, & Triplett, 2009).
Likewise, research has demonstrated that minorities tend to be more distrust-
ful of the police (Hindelang, 1974; Lasley, 1994; Tyler, 2005). Regarding
age, most studies suggest that as individuals get older, they generally express
more favorable opinions about the police (Frank, Brandl, Cullen, & Stichman,
1996; Ren, Cao, Lovrich, & Gaffney, 2005; Wu & Sun, 2009). Research
regarding the relationship between gender and attitudes toward police is less
conclusive: Some studies have found that females express more favorable
attitudes (Cao, Frank, & Cullen, 1996), while others suggest gender is insig-
nificant (Frank et al., 1996; Lai & Zhao, 2010; Ren et al., 2005). In their
study, which focused specifically on trust in police, Wu and Sun (2009) found
that gender did not significantly influence levels of trust. Other than demo-
graphics, recent research has shown that individual differences in self-control
and emotion influence the relationship between procedural justice, legiti-
macy, and compliance (Murphy & Tyler, 2008; Reisig, Wolfe, & Holtfreter,
2011; Wolfe, 2011).

Despite the various sources of trust in the police, the key argument of
Tyler’s (1990) process-based theory is that procedural justice judgments are
the primary antecedent. That is, people’s trust in the police is most impor-
tantly shaped by how fair they perceive officer actions to be and to a much
lesser extent by the fairness of outcome distribution or individual differences.
An emerging body of research calls into question this proposition and sug-
gests that individuals’ contextual environments exert important effects on
their evaluations of legal actors such as the police.

Perceived Collective Efficacy and Trust in the
Police

Sociological inquiry appreciates that neighborhood context plays an impor-
tant role in shaping resident attitudes and perceptions. Ross and Jang (2000),
for instance, demonstrated that individuals situated in communities with
greater amounts of disorder reported significantly higher levels of fear and
mistrust of fellow neighborhood residents. Similarly, Ross, Mirowsky, and
Pribesh (2001) showed that people who live in communities where the threat

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616 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

of victimization is common are more likely to feel powerless in the fight
against becoming a victim. This sense of powerlessness serves to intensify
mistrust of one’s neighbors. Ecological conditions have also been shown to
influence perceptions of neighborhood disorder (Sampson & Raudenbush,
2004), safety (Austin, Furr, & Spine, 2002), and victimization risk (Pickett,
Chiricos, Golden, & Gertz, 2012). In short, negative attitudes are partly the
result of objective and subjective indicators of structural disadvantages.

Variation in neighborhood characteristics also matters with respect to atti-
tudes toward the police (see, for example, Brunson & Gau, 2011; Decker,
1981; Weitzer, 1999; Weitzer & Tuch, 2004) and the law more generally (see,
for example, Kirk & Matsuda, 2011). In their now seminal study, Sampson
and Bartusch (1998) found that respondents from neighborhoods with greater
concentrated disadvantage tended to have higher levels of dissatisfaction
with the police and an overall cynical perception of the law and legal actors.
In their words, “there is an ecological structuring to normative orientations—
‘cognitive landscapes’ where crime and deviance are more or less expected
and institutions of criminal justice are mistrusted” (Sampson & Bartusch,
1998, p. 800). Sun, Hu, Wong, He, and Li (2013) recently used a unique
sample of Chinese respondents to show that disadvantaged context dimin-
ishes trust in neighbors, which hinders trust in the police (see also Reisig &
Parks, 2000, 2003; Wu et al., 2009).

Explanations for the relationship between context and attitudes toward the
police and the legal system are largely grounded in subcultural theory. Indeed,
in the social disorganization tradition, structural disadvantages such as pov-
erty, racial and ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility produce mutual
distrust and reduced social cohesion among community residents (Anderson,
1999; Kornhauser, 1978; Sampson & Groves, 1989; Shaw & McKay, 1942).
The obstruction of common values, beliefs, and norms governing appropriate
behavior fosters the emergence of subcultural value systems whereby crime
is expected and the law is looked upon with a cynical eye. Sampson and
Bartusch (1998) suggest that those subjected to such anomic conditions
should be expected to harbor cynical views about the justice system regard-
less of whether they personally condemn violence or deviance. After all, the
police may be less inclined to work diligently in communities where resi-
dents rarely self-regulate social norms (Carr, Napolitano, & Keating, 2007;
Gau et al., 2012; Klinger, 1997; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998; Smith, 1986)—a
situation that may impede feelings that the police can be trusted to make good
decisions for the community.

Although largely a framework of “places,” subcultural theory does not
dismiss the important role of individual perceptions of neighborhood condi-
tions (Fischer, 1995). Indeed, much contextually focused research relies on

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Nix et al. 617

individual perceptions to create aggregate neighborhood measures (see, for
example, Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). In addition, research evi-
dence compiled to date clearly shows that compositional differences, while
important, fail to fully explain a significant portion of the variation in percep-
tions and attitudes (see, for example, Sampson & Bartusch, 1998).

We maintain that part of the answer lies in individual perceptions of neigh-
borhood conditions in which people are situated, particularly for concepts
such as trust in the police. In other words, an individual’s cognitive orienta-
tion toward legal authorities may be largely shaped by how he or she per-
ceives community informal social control efforts and mutual
cohesion—creating a social-psychological cognitive landscape. Research
findings support this view. Gau and associates (2012), for example, recently
found that concentrated disadvantage (i.e., a contextual factor) failed to sig-
nificantly predict evaluations of police legitimacy but individual perceptions
of neighborhood social cohesion played a key role in explaining such norma-
tive attitudes. In fact, social cohesion remained associated with legitimacy
evaluations even when accounting for central theoretical precursors of legiti-
macy such as procedural and distributive justice. While studies reveal that
compositional factors influence the development of cognitive landscapes
primed for legal authority mistrust, research of this type suggests that the
social-psychological cognitive orientation toward one’s neighborhood plight
may be as important (see Kochel, 2012, for a related discussion).

Durkheim’s classic view of anomie offers insight into the theoretical con-
nection between individual perceptions of neighborhood conditions and atti-
tudes toward legal authorities. In its traditional sense, anomie is a condition
of normlessness where the standards governing society are no longer held by
a majority of citizens. Take for example Sampson and colleagues’ (1997) idea
of collective efficacy. Normally viewed as a contextual factor but easily
viewed as a social-psychological orientation, perceived collective efficacy in
one’s neighborhood would encompass a feeling of common goals and social
cohesion among neighbors. A breakdown in perceived collective efficacy is
appropriately conceptualized as an anomic cognitive orientation about one’s
ecological environment. Recall from earlier discussions that trust in the
police is a normative orientation toward a legal actor. Thus, it would be
expected that those who view less collective efficacy in their neighborhoods
would harbor greater mistrust in the police because normative standards are
broken, which allow the spread of cynical views of the police. In short, ano-
mie in the form of diminished perceived collective efficacy may structure
mistrust in formal social control agents. Research has yet to explore the indi-
vidual social-psychological orientation of perceived collective efficacy on
normative evaluations of trust in the police—a gap this study aims to address.

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618 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

To this point, our discussion implies that one’s orientation toward neigh-
borhood conditions may be an important source of trust in the police. A strict
interpretation of Tyler’s (1990; Tyler & Huo, 2002) process-based model of
policing would suggest otherwise. The framework proposes that normative
standards of police officer conduct are more important in forming trust from
the public. That is, individuals’ perceptions of law enforcement procedural
justice should be responsible for establishing trust in the police regardless of
the degree of anomie created by perceived lack of informal social controls or
mutual trust in a neighborhood. Treating people fairly sends the message to
community residents that the government cares about their neighborhood
despite the inability of fellow citizens to share similar views (Sampson &
Bartusch, 1998). In statistical vernacular, procedural justice should at least
partially mediate the effect of perceived collective efficacy on trust in the
police. Extant empirical evidence lends preliminary support to this claim
because procedural justice has been shown to influence evaluations of legiti-
macy even after accounting for respondents’ perceptions of social cohesion
and disorder (Gau et al., 2012; Tyler & Wakslak, 2004). Research to date,
however, has been unable to explore the extent to which procedural justice
accounts for the relationship between perceptions of neighborhood context
and evaluations of the police. In particular, left as an open empirical question
is whether procedural justice as an antecedent of trust in the police super-
sedes the influence of perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy.

If such a relationship exists it also suggests that perceptions of neighbor-
hood context may partially set the stage for evaluations of police procedural
justice. The theoretical discussions and research reviewed above would sug-
gest that such a relationship is possible. That is, perceptions of neighborhood
context may partially explain perceptions of procedural justice (Tyler &
Wakslak, 2004). Individuals who perceive a breakdown of informal social
controls and mutual cohesion in their own neighborhoods may be more likely
to maintain cynical views of the law and less likely to perceive police efforts
as procedurally fair (Sampson & Bartusch, 1998). However, the extent to
which perceptions of neighborhood context influence evaluations of proce-
dural justice which ultimately impact feelings of trust in the police remains
an unexplored research question.

The Current Study

The purpose of the current study is to move the literatures on attitudes toward
the police and procedural justice forward in several ways. First, we address a
gap in existing literature by exploring the extent to which procedural justice
evaluations are associated with trust in the police. This is important consider-
ing that most prior process-based model research examines the antecedents

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Nix et al. 619

of police legitimacy and compelling evidence demonstrating that trust and
legitimacy are distinct normative attitudes. Second, we examine whether per-
ceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy influence trust in the police.
Contextual focused research suggests there may be a relationship but little
attention has been given to individual perceptions of neighborhood condi-
tions on evaluations of the police—particularly for trust in the police. Third,
analyses test a strict interpretation of Tyler’s process-based model by exam-
ining whether individuals’ evaluations of procedural justice override the
effects of perceived collective efficacy on level of trust in the police. In sum-
mary, we expect procedural justice and perceived collective efficacy to have
independent effects on trust evaluations (i.e., when examined in separate
analyses). Once both concepts are simultaneously examined, however, we
expect perceptions of procedural fairness to mediate most of the association
between perceived collective efficacy and trust. We conclude the study by
discussing the theoretical implications of our findings and suggesting policy-
relevant take away messages and productive avenues for future research.

Method

Dat

a

Data for the present study were drawn from a random sample mail survey of
residents from a mid-sized, urban city in the southeastern United States. The
survey served as one component in the evaluation of a larger directed-inter-
vention law enforcement initiative funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Four neighborhoods situated in the largest patrol regions of the city were
selected as part of the project and corresponding survey. One of the neighbor-
hoods was selected for a targeted enforcement to occur in the future. Two
control neighborhoods were selected to closely match the target site in terms
of economic disadvantage (e.g., median household income) and crime rate.
On average, these three neighborhoods experienced 82.8 Part I crimes per
1,000 residents and had a median household income of US$27,700 in the
year prior to the survey. A fourth control neighborhood was selected by the
law enforcement agency to serve as a contrast to the three economically dis-
advantaged and crime-ridden communities. This more affluent neighborhood
(median household income ~US$51,000) experienced 45.5 Part I crimes per
1,000 residents in the year prior to the survey.

One thousand households from each neighborhood were randomly
selected to take part in the survey. Questionnaires were administered prior to
any changes in police strategic or tactical operations and explored issues such
as perceptions of the local law enforcement agency, neighborhood

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620 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

conditions, and local problems. A modified Dillman method was used to
elicit participation in the survey. Specifically, an initial round of surveys was
mailed to all households with a cover letter detailing the purpose of the ques-
tionnaire and importance of participation. Two weeks later, a reminder post
card was mailed to potential respondents to help encourage those who had
not responded to do so. Finally, 2 weeks after the post card reminder another
full survey and cover letter was mailed to potential respondents. In addition
to the mail survey, respondents were also given the option to complete the
survey on a secure website (Dillman et al., 2009). As expected, not all
addresses in the sampling frame were useable: 323 surveys were returned
because they were vacant or otherwise inaccessible addresses. A total of
1,681 residents returned completed surveys representing a 45.72% response
rate (over 95% of respondents completed the mail version). This is compa-
rable with average response rates generated from other random sample mail
surveys (Baruch, 1999). Multiple imputation was used to handle missing data
due to item nonresponse, which is available in the Stata 13 mi impute suite
(m = 30 imputations). Multiple imputation is a commonly accepted method
for dealing with missing data, particularly when only a small handful of cells
are missing for items used in the construction of theoretical scales (Acock,
2005; Carlin, Galati, & Royston, 2008; Royston, 2004; Turanovic & Pratt,
2012).

The sample was 66% female and ranged in age from 19 to 96 years with a
mean of 57 years. The sample consisted of 52% White, 41% African
American, and 7% other racial group respondents. Of these participants, 96%
indicated they had lived at their current residence for at least 6 months. In
terms of education, about half of the sample had a college degree. Compared
with official data on each of the neighborhoods, the sample is comprised of a
slightly larger proportion of females and older people but closely approxi-
mates the racial composition of the communities. Therefore, the sample rea-
sonably represents the population from which it was drawn on these factors.
In addition, it is important to note that most respondents were sampled from
neighborhoods that have relatively high levels of disadvantage and crime
and, therefore, exposure to law enforcement.

Dependent Variable

Consistent with Tyler and Huo’s (2002) conceptualization of motive-based
trust, respondents were asked the following question to capture level of trust
in the police: “The police can be trusted to make decisions that are right for
my community.” The item is similar to that used in prior research on trust in
the police and measures the degree to which respondents feel that local police
officers’ motives and future behavior will be guided by benevolent concerns

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Nix et al. 621

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics.

M SD Min. Max.

Trust in the police 2.853 0.648 1 4
Procedural justice 12.506 2.361 4 16
Perceived collective efficacy 28.356 5.620 10 40
Distributive injustice 3.904 1.473 2 8
Perceived disorder 3.656 3.886 0 18
Prior victimizationa 0.228 0.474 0 3.367
No police contact 0.682 0.466 0 1
Citizen-initiated police contact 0.205 0.404 0 1
Lower crime neighborhood 0.305 0.460 0 1
Police-initiated contact 0.113 0.317 0 1
Education 3.242 0.907 1 4
Racial minority 0.411 0.492 0 1
Female 0.661 0.474 0 1
Age years 57.838 16.363 19 96

aNatural log transformation.

about the larger community and its citizens (Tyler, 2001, 2005; Tyler & Huo,
2002; Wu & Sun, 2009). Responses were measured on a 4-point Likert-type
scale (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree). Therefore, higher scores
on the trust item suggest that a respondent believes police actions are gener-
ally made in good faith and with the community in mind. The distribution of
the item indicates the sample has moderate trust in their police force (M =
2.853, SD = 0.648). However, more than one fifth of respondents either
strongly disagreed or disagreed with the question, demonstrating that a large
portion of the sample is distrustful of local police officers. Table 1 provides
descriptive statistics for all variables used in the analyses.

Independent Variables

Procedural justice. The items used to operationalize procedural justice were
adopted from recent examinations of the process-based model of policing
(see, for example, Gau et al., 2012; Reisig et al., 2007; Sunshine & Tyler,
2003; Tankebe, 2013). Participants were asked to indicate how strongly they
agree that the police in their neighborhood “treat citizens with respect,” “take
the time to listen to people,” “treat people fairly,” and “explain their deci-
sions to the people they deal with” (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly
agree). The individual items capture key aspects of Tyler’s (1990)

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622 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

conceptualization of procedural fairness—quality of decision making (e.g.,
neutrality) and quality of treatment (e.g., status recognition). Principal-axis
factor (PAF) analysis demonstrated that the four items loaded onto a single
factor (λ = 3.07, factor loadings > .81). The items also demonstrated strong
internal consistency (α = .94; see, for example, Cortina, 1993) and, therefore,
were summed to form an additive procedural justice scale with higher scores
indicating more favorable evaluations of police fairness.

Perceived collective efficacy. Consistent with the above theoretical discussion,
perceived collective efficacy is measured at the individual level and concep-
tualized as the social-psychological cognitive orientation respondents have
toward their neighborhood. We adopted our measures from Sampson and col-
leagues (1997), who demonstrated that shared expectations of informal social
control and social cohesion/trust form the constituent parts of collective effi-
cacy. We measured “informal social control” with five items asking respon-
dents to indicate how likely it would be (1 = very unlikely to 4 = very likely)
that their neighbors could be counted on to intervene if (a) teenagers were
skipping school and hanging out on a street corner, (b) teenagers were spray-
painting graffiti on a local building, (c) teenagers were showing disrespect to
an adult, (d) a fight broke out near your home, and (e) the fire station close to
your home was threatened by budget cuts. “Social cohesion/trust” was cap-
tured by asking respondents how strongly they agreed (1 = strongly disagree
to 4 = strongly agree) that “people around here are willing to help their neigh-
bors,” “this is a close-knit neighborhood,” “people in this neighborhood can
be trusted,” “people in this neighborhood generally do not get along with
each other” (reverse coded), and “people in this neighborhood do not share
the same values” (reverse coded). PAF revealed that the items loaded on their
respective informal social control (λ = 4.52, factor loadings > .66) and social
cohesion/trust (λ = 2.14, factor loadings > .61) factors. Consistent with Samp-
son and associates (1997), and a host of prior research (see, for example,
Kochel, 2012; Wells, Schafer, Varano, & Bynum, 2006), we combined all
items into a single additive scale to represent individual perceptions of neigh-
borhood collective efficacy (α = .86).1

Control Variables

To provide unbiased estimates of the effects of procedural justice and per-
ceived collective efficacy on level of trust in the police, several demographic
control variables were included in the analyses. Respondent age is measured
continuously, and gender (1 = female) and race (1 = racial minority) are
dummy coded. Education is measured with four ordered categories (1 = less

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Nix et al. 623

than a high school diploma, 2 = high school diploma or General Education
Development, 3 = some college, and 4 = bachelor’s degree or higher). We
also used a dummy variable—lower crime neighborhood—to control for
whether respondents lived in the more affluent, lower crime rate neighbor-
hood included in the sample (1 = yes). Respondents who lived in one of the
more homogeneous, high crime rate neighborhoods were coded as 0.2

Additional variables pertaining to individual experiences and perceptions
were also included as statistical controls. First, scholars have suggested that
the type of contact one has with law enforcement may set the tone for how a
citizen evaluates the trustworthiness of police with police-initiated contact
leading to more contentious interactions and attitudes (Engel, 2003; Fyfe,
1986; Piquero & Bouffard, 2003; Tyler, 1990). Accordingly, we asked respon-
dents to indicate whether they had contact with local police during the 6
months leading up to the survey. Those who answered affirmatively were
questioned about the nature of the contact (“Was this contact ever initiated by
the officer?”). Using this information, the dummy variables citizen-initiated
contact (1 = yes) and no police contact (1 = yes) were constructed and
included in the analyses (police-initiated contact served as the reference
category).

Second, research reveals that crime victims tend to have less favorable
perceptions of police compared with their counterparts with no victimization
exposure (Brown & Benedict, 2002). The survey inquired about how many
times (0 to 4 or more times) in the previous 6 months respondents had been
the victim of each of the following offenses: vehicle stolen, vehicle broken
into, property vandalized, home burglarized, physically assaulted (i.e., by
someone using hands or feet), assaulted or threatened with a weapon (e.g.,
knife, club, or gun), and robbed. PAF of the items revealed a single-factor
(λ = 2.34, factor loadings > .42) and Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated adequate
internal consistency (α = .71). Individuals’ responses were summed to form
an additive prior victimization scale. A natural log transformation was used to
induce normality in the scale (a constant was added to remove zero responses).

Third, research demonstrates that individuals’ perceptions of disorder
within their neighborhoods partially explain attitudes toward the police
(Reisig & Parks, 2000; Schafer, Huebner, & Bynum, 2003; Schuck,
Rosenbaum, & Hawkins, 2008). Adopting items used in prior disorder
research, we asked participants to indicate how much of a problem a series of
disorder related activities were in their neighborhood (i.e., garbage, excessive
noise, vandalism, drunk drivers, traffic problems, public drunkenness, drug
use and sales, loitering, and youth gangs; see, for example, Gau & Pratt,
2008). PAF provided evidence of a unidimensional construct (λ = 3.78, factor
loadings > .54) and Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated strong internal

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624 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

consistency (α = .86). Thus, the items were summated into a perceived disor-
der scale.

Finally, perceptions of the fairness of outcomes distributed by the police
were taken into consideration. Specifically, respondents were asked how
strongly they agree (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree) that the
police in their neighborhood “give minorities less help because of their race”
and “provide better services to wealthy citizens” (r = .73). The items are
consistent with those used in previous literature and were combined into a
summated distributive injustice scale (Tyler, 2005; Tyler & Wakslak, 2004).

Analytic Strategy

Our analysis proceeds in a series of steps, each of which builds upon the
other. First, we use an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model to
estimate the effect of perceived collective efficacy on perceptions of police
procedural fairness. This step serves two purposes: (a) It establishes whether
perceptions of neighborhood context shape evaluations of police fairness—a
topic largely unexplored to date, and (b) it sets up a necessary condition for
detecting the mediation effect examined in later stages of the analysis (i.e.,
the proposed mediated variable [perceived collective efficacy] is associated
with the supposed mediator [procedural justice]; see MacKinnon, Krull, &
Lockwood, 2000). The second step of the analysis involves three multivari-
ate models examining the predictors of trust in the police. We use ordered
logistic regression to estimate these models because the dependent vari-
able—trust in the police—is ordinal in nature (Long & Freese, 2006). The
first ordered logit equation serves as a baseline model to establish whether
procedural justice is associated with trust in the police, net of statistical con-
trols. The second ordered logit model examines the degree to which percep-
tions of neighborhood collective efficacy, net of relevant statistical controls,
are associated with level of trust in the police. Finally, in the third model,
procedural justice is added back into the equation to determine whether per-
ceptions of police fairness mediate the influence of perceived collective effi-
cacy on trust.

Several diagnostic tests revealed that harmful levels of collinearity are not
present in the multivariate models discussed below. First, all bivariate corre-
lations fell below an absolute value of .70, which is typically used as a thresh-
old indicative of harmful collinearity (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Second,
all variance inflation factors from the multivariate models fell below the 4.0
threshold (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007) and all condition indices below the
threshold of 30 (Belsley, Kuh, & Welsch, 1980; Mason & Perreault, 1991).

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Nix et al. 625

Table 2. The Effect of Perceived Collective Efficacy on Procedural Justice.

Procedural justicea

Variable b SE β t test

Perceived collective efficacy .084 .014 .230 5.83*

*

Distributive injustice −.344 .053 −.243 −6.52**
Perceived disorder −.038 .020 −1.87
Prior victimizationb −.276 .151 −1.83
No police contactc .088 .200 0.44
Citizen-initiated police contactc .070 .230 0.30
Lower crime neighborhood −.320 .154 −.097 −2.08*
Education .099 .077 1.27
Racial minority −.196 .154 −1.27
Female .186 .125 1.50
Age years .009 .004 .066 2.20*
Intercept 10.818 .663 16.32**
F test 15.02**
R2 .189

Note. Entries are unstandardized partial regression coefficients (b), robust standard errors,
and standardized partial regression coefficients (β).
aOrdinary least squares regression equation.
bNatural log transformation.
c“Police-initiated contact” is the reference category.
*p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed test).

Results

In Table 2, the procedural justice scale is regressed onto the perceived collec-
tive efficacy scale and statistical control variables. To begin, the equation
demonstrates that the variables account for nearly 19% of the variation in
perceptions of procedural justice (F-test = 15.02, p < .01). Additional analy- ses (not shown) reveal that individuals’ perceptions of neighborhood collec- tive efficacy alone are responsible for 30% of the explained variation. The size of the standardized partial regression coefficient (β) suggests that per- ceived collective efficacy has a moderate, statistically significant effect on procedural justice (β = .230, p < .01). In short, individuals who believe more informal social controls and social cohesion exist (i.e., collective efficacy) within their neighborhood are more likely to perceive the police as exercising their authority in procedurally fair manners. Conversely, this suggests that the anomic conditions created by lack of collective efficacy in a neighborhood makes it more likely for individuals to perceive police officers as

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626 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

procedurally unjust, regardless of individual demographic differences, prior
police contact, prior victimization, and perceptions of disorder or distributive
injustice. The distributive injustice scale also reached statistical significance
in the model (β = −.243, p < .01). People who believe police officers unfairly distribute outcomes to the public (i.e., based on race or wealth) are less likely to view their actions as procedurally fair. This finding is consistent with a lengthy roster of process-based model studies (see, for example, Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 1990; Tyler & Huo, 2002) and, therefore, lends confidence in the validity of our data. It is also worth mentioning that, on average, respondents who lived in the lower crime neighborhood viewed police offi- cers as less procedurally fair (β = −.097, p < .05) and older folks tended to evaluate the police as more fair (β = .066, p < .05).

The findings from Table 2 are important for several reasons. For one, indi-
vidual perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy “matter” in the expla-
nation of evaluations of police procedural justice. Thus, the theoretical
arguments made above appear to hold a grain of truth. Second, the effect of
perceived collective efficacy on procedural justice is almost as strong as the
influence of distributive injustice. This is telling because tests of Tyler’s
(1990) theory routinely reveal that distributive justice is a key predictor of
procedural justice. Clearly, perceptions of one’s neighborhood conditions set
the stage for evaluations of the police. Finally, the results establish a basic
requirement for detecting possible mediation in the analyses to follow
(MacKinnon et al., 2000).

The analyses in Table 3 explore the independent and additive effects of
procedural justice and perceived collective efficacy on evaluations of trust in
the police. Model 1 provides a baseline ordered logistic regression equation
that examines the effect of procedural justice on trust. As expected, the equa-
tion provides more explanatory power than would be expected by chance
alone (Likelihood Ratio χ2 = 372.46, p < .01; McFadden’s R2 = .183). The ordered log-odds coefficient (b) indicates that individuals’ evaluations of police procedural fairness are positively associated with their trust in local law enforcement officers (b = .488, p < .01). When examining these esti- mates, it is important to remember that they correspond with the ordinal nature of the dependent variable. Therefore, the coefficients reveal that unit increases in a particular independent variable correspond with the respective ordered log-odds increase/decrease of being in a higher response category (compared with all lower response categories) on the dependent variable (i.e., strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree)—a somewhat compli- cated interpretation indeed. A simplified interpretation involves examining the percent change in the odds for a one standard deviation increase in the independent variable (%StdX). Specifically, a one standard deviation increase

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627

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628 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

in procedural justice increases the predicted odds of being more trusting of
the police by over 286%, holding all other variables constant. The strong
influence of procedural justice on trust in the police is consistent with the
previous literature discussed earlier. In fact, the only other variable in Model
1 that reached statistical significance was perceived disorder (b = .488, p < .01). Regardless of perceptions of procedural justice, individuals who per- ceive more incivilities in their neighborhoods tend to have less trust in the police. Visible signs of disorder may be cognitive cues that the police are not doing a good job and, therefore, cannot be fully trusted.

Model 2 presents parameter estimates from an ordered logistic regression
equation that examines the influence of perceived collective efficacy on trust
in the police, net of statistical controls. To establish whether perceived collec-
tive efficacy has an independent effect on trust, Model 2 excludes procedural
justice from the equation. Overall, the equation provides more explanatory
power than would be expected by chance (LR χ2 = 120.73, p < .01; McFadden’s R2 = .063). Consistent with our theoretical argument presented earlier, the ordered log-odds coefficient (b) indicates that individuals’ perceptions regarding the amount of collective efficacy in their neighborhood are related to their trust in local police (b = .059, p < .01). Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in perceived collective efficacy is associated with a 53.7% increase in the predicted odds of being more trusting of the police. Therefore, lack of informal social controls and social cohesion in a neighborhood are associated with lack of trust in the police.

The exclusion of procedural justice from the ordered logistic equation
seemed to allow several other significant relationships to be observed. As
would be expected based on prior literature, distributive injustice is nega-
tively associated with trust in the police (b = −.182, p < .01; Tyler & Huo, 2002). A one standard deviation increase in the distributive injustice scale corresponds with 23.2% reduction in trust. In addition, individuals who per- ceived more incivilities in their neighborhood (b = −.047, p < .01), individu- als residing in the lower crime neighborhood (b = −.356, p < .05), and racial minorities (b = −.278, p < .05) tended to have less trust in the police. The “lower crime neighborhood” effect suggests that low levels of criminal activ- ity in a neighborhood do not necessarily translate into a trusting relationship with the police. Perhaps those from higher socioeconomic and educational backgrounds are less inclined to believe that government agents such as the police always have the community’s best interest in mind when making deci- sions. Finally, the finding that racial minorities tended to be less trusting of the police is consistent with prior research (see, for example, Tyler, 2005).

Model 3 presents results from our full ordered logistic regression equation
that examines the additive effects of procedural justice and perceived

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Nix et al. 629

collective efficacy on trust, net of controls. Several findings from the analysis
merit attention. For starters, when compared with Model 2, the explanatory
power of Model 3 is increased significantly with the inclusion of procedural
justice (LR χ2 = 354.48, p < .01; McFadden’s R2 = .191). Consistent with the baseline equation (see Model 1), evaluations of procedural justice are associ- ated with trust in the police in the expected direction (b = .477, p < .01). Individuals who believe the police treat people more fairly and with justice are significantly more likely to trust officer motives. In addition, as evidenced by the magnitude of the standardized effect (%StdX = 273.0), procedural justice dominates the prediction of trust in the model. A single standard devi- ation increase in the procedural justice scale is expected to increase trust in the police by a factor of almost three. The other statistically significant effects come nowhere near the magnitude of the procedural justice effect, which is a finding that squares well with prior research demonstrating the explanatory power of the construct (see, for example, Tyler & Huo, 2002). In fact, a com- parison of Models 2 and 3 reveals that accounting for perceptions of proce- dural justice renders the effects of distributive injustice, lower crime neighborhood, and racial minority to statistical insignificance (Tyler, 2005).

Finally, and most important for the present study, the ordered log-odds
coefficient (b) for perceived collective efficacy is reduced in magnitude by
52.5% (from .059 in Model 2 to .028 in Model 3). Although perceived collec-
tive efficacy still has a significant effect on trust (b = .028, p < .05), the data clearly demonstrate that a large portion of the connection is explained by evaluations of procedural justice. That is to say, folks who perceive less col- lective efficacy in their neighborhood are less likely to feel police behave fairly (see Table 2) and, as a partial consequence of this procedural injustice, are less trusting that law enforcement can make good decisions for their com- munities. At the same time, regardless of process-based evaluations, peoples’ social-psychological cognitive landscapes are partially responsible for shap- ing their level of trust in the police.3

Discussion

The process-based model of regulation holds that compliance, cooperation,
and empowerment from the public are more likely to occur when the public
perceives authority figures as trustworthy and legitimate (Tyler, 1990; Tyler
& Huo, 2002). While scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the
sources and consequences of legitimacy, trust remains largely unexplored.
The present study demonstrated that perceived collective efficacy partially
shapes levels of trust among citizens. However, when perceptions of proce-
dural justice are taken into consideration, the effect of perceived collective

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630 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

efficacy is largely mediated. Both of these findings fill important gaps in the
process-based literature. Strict adherence to Tyler’s process-based model
would suggest that procedural justice should completely override (i.e., medi-
ate) the effect of perceived collective efficacy on levels of trust among citi-
zens. Yet, our data reveal that perceived collective efficacy retains significance
even after accounting for procedural justice. This suggests that (a) procedural
justice is a primary antecedent of trust, and (b) perceived collective efficacy,
though not as strong as procedural justice, is important to the explanation of
trust in its own right. For that reason, future research should not overlook the
effect of citizen perceptions regarding collective efficacy when examining
trust in the police. With that said, several theoretical and practical implica-
tions require further discussion.

For starters, our findings advance the procedural justice literature in sev-
eral important ways. First, our data reveal that perceptions of neighborhood
collective efficacy are associated with variation in evaluations of procedural
justice. Individuals situated in environments with anomic conditions (i.e.,
low collective efficacy) appear less inclined to view police actions as proce-
durally fair. The important task for future research is to explore this relation-
ship in further detail. Specifically, it is necessary to uncover whether
breakdowns in neighborhood collective efficacy result in normlessness per-
ceptions that lead to legal cynicism or if such neighborhoods are simply
policed differently. Klinger (1997), for instance, posits that police officers
will less vigorously respond to crime problems in communities with higher
levels of crime. Perhaps lack of police attention to community problems
causes people in neighborhoods with lower levels of collective efficacy to
provide lower evaluations of procedural justice. Exploring the causal process
between perceived collective efficacy and procedural justice is an essential
next step for future inquiry.

Second, the present study offered evidence that perceptions of procedural
fairness are associated with greater trust in local law enforcement. This find-
ing expands on the rather limited, yet growing literature on the antecedents of
trust in the police (Jackson et al., 2012; Sargeant et al., 2013; Tyler, 2005;
Tyler & Huo, 2002). Procedural fairness—respect, neutrality, and status rec-
ognition—appears to play a central role in individuals’ normative evaluation
process regarding the level of trust given to law enforcement authorities.
While distinct concepts, our results indicate that the process-based model
explains citizen trust in the police much like it explains evaluations of police
legitimacy. That is, perceptions of procedural justice are more important than
other relevant factors such as distributive justice, contact with the police,
prior victimization, perceptions of neighborhood context, and demographic
characteristics in explaining normative beliefs about the trustworthiness of

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Nix et al. 631

police officers. Along these lines, thoughtful theorizing and rigorous research
are needed with respect to the distinction between trust and legitimacy.
Scholars such as Tankebe (2013; see also Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012) and
Jackson and colleagues (2012) have begun questioning Tyler’s (1990; see
also Tyler & Huo, 2002) conceptualization of legitimacy. Emerging empirical
research suggests that trust and legitimacy are distinct (Gau, 2011, 2013;
Reisig et al., 2007) but limitations in theoretical conceptualization currently
preclude a complete understanding of specific differences between the con-
cepts. We encourage continued research in this area to improve our overall
understanding of the process-based model of policing and the extent to which
trust and legitimacy are separate normative attitudes regarding law enforce-
ment. It will also be important to determine whether trust and legitimacy have
different effects on compliance, cooperation, or empowerment.

The current study’s second implication is related to Sampson and
Bartusch’s (1988) demonstration that macro-level conditions influence atti-
tudes toward the police. In short, there is an ecological taxonomy whereby
cognitive landscapes emerge. Residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods are
more likely to be cynical of the law and the police. Our findings suggest that
a similar process may be operating at the individual level. That is, one’s per-
ception of his or her surroundings functions as a social-psychological mecha-
nism that shapes his or her cognitive orientation toward law enforcement.
This is important because it expands on existing macro-level research and
specifies a potential mechanism by which neighborhood conditions influence
normative evaluations of formal social control agents. In sum, perception of
neighborhood context is reality and it manifests itself in evaluations of police
trustworthiness.

Relatedly, one of the most important findings from this study was that
procedural justice mediated much of the link between perceived collective
efficacy and trust. A close reading of Tyler’s (1990; Tyler & Huo, 2002) pro-
cess-based model of policing would seem to suggest that procedural justice is
the most important antecedent of trust in the police and that it should render
other demographic and contextual influences less meaningful (i.e., it should
mediate those effects). Accordingly, our findings partially support Tyler’s
framework—more than half of the relationship between perceived collective
efficacy and trust is explained by perceptions of procedural fairness.
Nonetheless, perceived neighborhood collective efficacy remained a statisti-
cally significant predictor of level of trust in the police after accounting for
variation in procedural justice perceptions. The take away message is that
failing to account for evaluations of procedural justice will artificially inflate
the observed influence of perceived collective efficacy on trust; however,
one’s social-psychological orientation toward neighborhood circumstances is

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632 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

still important in explaining trust even after accounting for the effect of pro-
cedural justice. The present study, therefore, demonstrates the potential util-
ity of integrating individual perceptions of neighborhood context into the
overall process-based model of policing.

Consistent with previous process-based model research, our findings have
important policy implications. Chief among them is that procedural fairness
matters far more than anything else we accounted for in shaping levels of
trust in the police. Our results suggest that evaluations of procedural justice
partially override the influence that negative neighborhood and social envi-
ronments may have on citizens’ trust in the police. This finding is important
with respect to policing efforts because officers spend much of their time in
neighborhoods characterized by concentrated disadvantage and low levels of
collective efficacy (Klinger, 1997; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998; Smith, 1986).
In such areas, it is imperative that police officers exercise their authority in a
procedurally fair manner because residents of these neighborhoods appear to
have less favorable attitudes toward the police to begin with. While residents
of these neighborhoods are more likely to be distrusting of authorities, our
findings suggest that trust can be established between such individuals and
the police if officers maintain a high level of respect, politeness, and fairness
during their duties. Conversely, if officers fail to be polite or treat citizens in
these areas disrespectfully, levels of mistrust could be exacerbated. This has
real consequences for police officers because lack of trust breeds less compli-
ance with the law and officer directives, less cooperative behavior (e.g.,
offering information relevant to criminal investigations), and less willingness
to empower local police with greater resources.

The results of this study are not without limitations. For one, we were
unable to account for compositional effects on trust in the police by measur-
ing neighborhood-level characteristics. Unfortunately, we only had survey
data from respondents who lived in four neighborhoods, which is insufficient
to conduct multilevel analyses (Rabe-Hesketh & Skrondal, 2008).

The results of our study, however, suggest that it is important for future
research to explore the simultaneous (i.e., additive) effect of macro-level and
perceptual indicators of neighborhood context on evaluations of the police.
This will allow for a richer understanding of whether context or perceptions
of context matter more in explaining trust in local law enforcement. In addi-
tion, our measure of trust in the police captured only “motive-based” trust.
Future work could help move this line of inquiry forward by examining the
influence of perceived collective efficacy and procedural justice on different
conceptual forms of trust (e.g., institutional trust) or scales that capture vari-
ous components of trust (see e.g., Tyler & Huo, 2002). Finally, our data were
unable to speak about potential differences in the effects of procedural justice
and perceived collective efficacy on trust in the police between Whites and

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Nix et al. 633

ethnic minorities. The city from which the current sample was drawn is almost
equally represented by Whites and African Americans and, therefore, offers
limited ability to examine trust in the police among Hispanics. Future research
could move the procedural justice literature forward by examining the appli-
cability of the process-based model to Hispanics’ and other ethnic minorities’
evaluations of law enforcement (see, for example, Sargeant et al., 2013).

In conclusion, individuals’ social-psychological orientation toward their
neighborhoods is important. This finding suggests future researchers may
wish to explore the difference between macro- and individual-level (i.e., per-
ceptional) neighborhood indicators on trust and legitimacy evaluations (as
well as other attitudes toward the police). For example, simply because one
resides in a disadvantaged neighborhood does not necessarily imply that he
or she will perceive it as disorganized or dangerous (and vice versa). If true,
the question for researchers is to explain why such differences in perception
of neighborhood conditions develop in the face of objective indicators. In
addition, how do differences in subjective perceptions of neighborhood con-
text and objective measures of context explain individuals’ behaviors and
evaluations of the legal authorities? That is, do compositional effects matter
more or does perception of one’s neighborhood reflect reality? Furthermore,
because the present study was concerned only with sources of trust, future
researchers might wish to explore its potential consequences. That is, are
cooperation, compliance, and empowerment more likely to occur when resi-
dents are trusting of the police? And, does trust in law enforcement explain
more of these outcomes than subjective or objective neighborhood indica-
tors? In the end, our results underscore the predictive accuracy and explana-
tory power of Tyler’s process-based theory. We add to the literature by
demonstrating its utility in explaining trust in the police—something rela-
tively unexplored in detail to date. In addition, we advance the literature by
demonstrating that perceived neighborhood collective efficacy is also an
important antecedent of trust evaluations. Future research should continue to
test the limits of the process-based model of policing, especially in light of
the potential practical importance of the framework.

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their helpful comments
and suggestions on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Authors’ Note

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publi-
cation are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department
of Justice.

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634 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported in part by
Grant 2009-DG-BX-K021, awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of
Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

Notes

1. We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that we conduct supplemental
analyses that examine the independent effects of “informal social control” and
“social cohesion” on trust in the police. All models presented below were re-
estimated by separately analyzing the effects of “informal social control” and
“social cohesion” on procedural justice (Table 2) and trust in the police (Table
3, Models 2 and 3). The analyses produced identical results in terms of signifi-
cance and direction as those presented below. Therefore, we are confident that
our results are not influenced by alternative operationalizations of collective effi-
cacy (or components of the concept) and the combined scale does not produce
misleading results.

2. Additional analyses were also conducted given the characteristics of the neigh-
borhoods selected as part of the larger targeted law enforcement initiative. We
estimated all models reported below separately for the three homogeneous
neighborhoods and the “lower crime neighborhood,” and all substantive results
remained unchanged. We also thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting sup-
plemental analyses using dummy variables for the three higher crime neighbor-
hoods and the lower crime neighborhood as the reference category (as opposed
to the single binary “lower crime neighborhood” indicator). All observed rela-
tionships in these supplemental analyses mirrored the results presented below
in terms of sign and significance. These robustness checks provide us with con-
fidence that our results are not biased as a result of our coding strategy or any
idiosyncrasies of the neighborhoods from which the sample was drawn.

3. A problem often encountered when using ordered logistic regression is that the
parallel-lines (i.e., proportional-odds) assumption is violated (Williams, 2006).
That is, one or more coefficients in the model may differ across values of the
dependent variable. The Brant (1990; see also, Long & Freese, 2006) test was
used to determine whether each of the regression coefficients estimated in the
ordered logistic models were similar across categories of trust in the police. One
variable—procedural justice—in Model 3, Table 3 marginally violated the par-
allel-lines assumption. In such instances, Williams (2006) advocates estimating
a generalized ordered logit equation using Stata’s gologit2 command. Using the
partial proportional-odds model, generalized ordered logit allows some of the

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Nix et al. 635

regression coefficients to be the same across all values of the outcome variable
and others to differ. The relaxation allows different coefficients to be estimated
for procedural justice across categories of trust in the police. Allowing all param-
eter estimates to vary across values of the dependent variable would result in a
model equivalent to the multinomial logit but such a model lacks parsimony
and interpretability (see, for example, Breen, Luijkx, Müller, & Pollak, 2009;
Williams, 2006). To check the robustness of our results we re-estimated the trust
in police equations using generalized ordered logit models. The findings from
these analyses left our substantive conclusions unchanged. Given that the slight
violation of the proportional-odds model does not bias the results, and for ease
of interpretation, we report findings from the ordered logit models.

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Author Biographies

Justin Nix is a PhD student in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include policing, theory,
and procedural justice.

Scott E. Wolfe is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and
Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina. He received his PhD from
Arizona State University in 2012. His research has appeared in a variety of scholarly
journals, including British Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Behavior,
Journal of Criminal Justice, and Social Science Research.

Jeff Rojek is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal
Justice at the University of South Carolina. He received his PhD from University of

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640 Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

Missouri–St. Louis in 2005. His research has appeared in a variety of scholarly jour-
nals, including Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquency.

Robert J. Kaminski is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and
Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina. He received his PhD from The
University at Albany, State University of New York in 2002. His research has
appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Justice Quarterly, Criminology
and Public Policy, and Journal of Criminal Justice.

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Understandings of Justice: Institutional Legitimacy, Procedural Justice, and Political Tolerance
Author(s): James L. Gibson
Source: Law & Society Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1989), pp. 469-496
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UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE:
INSTlITUTIONAL LEGITIMACY,
PROCEDURAL JUSTICE, AND

POLITICAL TOLERANCE

JAMES L. GIBSON

This research examines the linkages among institutional legiti-
macy, perceptions of procedural justice, and voluntary compliance
with unpopular institutional decisions within the context of political
intolerance and repression. Several questions are addressed, includ-
ing: To what degree do judicial decisions contribute to the acceptance
of unpopular political decisions? Do court decisions have a greater
power to legitimize than the decisions of other political institutions?
Are courts perceived as more procedurally fair than other political
institutions? Do perceptions of procedural fairness-be it in a court
or legislative institution-contribute to the efficacy of institutional
decisions? The basic hypothesis of this research is that to the extent
that an institution employs fair decisionmaking procedures, it is
viewed as legitimate and citizens are more likely to comply with its
decisions, even when they are unpopular. Based on an analysis of na-
tional survey data, I conclude that, although perceptions of institu-
tional procedure have little impact on compliance, institutional legiti-
macy does seem to have some effect. The United States Supreme
Court in particular seems to have some ability to elicit acceptance of
public policies that are unpopular with the mass public. This effect is
greatest among opinion leaders. I conclude with some observations
about how these findings fit with the growing literature on proce-
dural justice and with some thoughts about the implications of the
findings for the protection of democratic liberty.

This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the 1988 Annual
Meeting of the Law and Society Association. It is based on research funded by
the National Science Foundation (SES Grant No. 86-06642). I am deeply in-
debted to Felice Levine at the Foundation for support for the project. A
number of colleagues have contributed significantly to the development of the
research, including Jonathan Casper, James Davis, Jennifer Hochschild, Stan-
ley Presser, Lee Sigelman, Paul M. Sniderman, John L. Sullivan, and Tom
Tyler. James P. Wenzel and Peter J. Van Koppen have made useful com-
ments on draft versions of this paper. I am also indebted to the National Opin-
ion Research Center – and especially to Dick Rubin – for their excellent ex-
ecution of the survey. James P. Wenzel, Bernadette McKinney, Steven
Shamberger, and Marilyn Yale provided quite helpful research assistance.
This paper also makes use of General Social Survey data, made available to me
through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.
Kathleen McGraw, Walter Murphy, and Tom Tyler provided most helpful
comments on an earlier version of this article. I am also thankful for the ex-
tremely thorough and thoughtful reviews provided by the referees.

LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Volume 23, Number 3 (1989)

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470 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

I. INTRODUCTION

One enduring component of the scholarly folklore on the
United States Supreme Court is that the Court has some sort of
special ability to legitimize government policies and actions. Be-
cause the Court is revered by the citizenry as the foremost guard-
ian of the Constitution, its decisions are given uncommon sway.
This special ability to legitimize is crucial to the political system
because legitimacy engenders voluntary compliance with law by
citizens (cf. Easton, 1965).

Dahl (1957) was one of the first social scientists to claim this
power for the Court. After being forced by empirical evidence to
conclude that the Supreme Court has rarely protected less power-
ful political minorities from the abuses of the majority, Dahl as-
serted that the institution’s function throughout American history
has been to legitimize public policy, not to upset it.’ Not only do
the decisions of the Supreme Court legitimize policy, but they also
do so more effectively than the decisions of any other institution.2
Dahl’s view quickly became the conventional wisdom among judi-
cial scholars (see, e.g., Black, 1960; Bickel, 1962).

This question of legitimizing capacity is crucial because of its
implications for voluntary compliance with law. Since legitimate
policies, even unpopular ones, are more likely to evoke compli-
ance, the legitimizing abilities of the Supreme Court perform an
extremely important function for the American polity. Unpopular
decisions by institutions considered to be legitimate are more
likely to be accepted as authoritative than are those made by polit-
ical institutions of lesser legitimacy (cf. Rasinski et al., 1985).
Since coercion is rarely effective in modern, mass societies-and
indeed it would be extremely costly if political systems were re-
quired to enforce each of their policies coercively-this ability to
legitimize is often considered essential to system stability and per-
sistence.

As important as this problem may be, empirical research has
not generated a great deal of support for the legitimation hypothe-
sis.3 For instance, Murphy and Tanenhaus (1968, 1969) conclude
that only a fairly small proportion of the population meets even
the minimal criteria necessary for the Court to legitimize public
policies. Jaros and Roper (1980), analyzing the responses of col-
lege students, were able to observe compliant behavior but were

1 Dahl’s thesis is controversial. For contrary points of view, see Funston
(1975) and Casper (1976).

2 Adamany (1973: 807) summarizes this position succinctly in defining le-
gitimacy as “an evaluative perception by the people that Supreme Court man-
dates should be accepted because the justices, as guardians of the Constitution,
act by legal right, because they exercise a traditional authority, and because
they constitute an appropriate societal institution.”

3 More generally, there is actually little systematic empirical research on
the concept legitimacy. See, for example, McEwen and Maiman, 1986; and
Rasinski et al., 1985. The most important exception is Tyler (forthcoming).

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GIBSON 471

remarkably unsuccessful in accounting for it. Baas and Thomas
(1984), also analyzing college students, found little ability of the
Supreme Court to legitimize policies. Others have become more
directly skeptical about the power of the Court to legitimize the
policies of other institutions. Writing in 1973, Adamany (p. 807)
concluded that “none who bottom their arguments on the Court’s
legitimacy-conferring capacity offer the slightest empirical basis
for its reality. Perhaps the doubter should be content to move for
a directed verdict, the proponents having failed utterly to adduce
even a scintilla of evidence, much less a preponderance, in support
of their plea.”4 Thus research on the United States Supreme
Court does not provide much confidence in the legitimation hy-
pothesis.

On the other hand, new evidence suggests that courts in gen-
eral may have special powers to legitimize. The growing literature
on procedural justice emphasizes that decisions that are perceived
as having been fairly made-even if they are unpopular-engender
considerably more support than they otherwise would (see, e.g.,
Tyler, 1988, forthcoming; Lind and Tyler, 1988). As Tyler, Rasin-
ski, and Griffin (1986; 976) note, “Citizens’ compliance with the
law and acceptance of new government policies is [sic] not based
solely on reward and punishment considerations, but also on judg-
ments about the fairness of rules and policies and of the process by
which these policies were arrived at.”5 Proper process contributes
to acceptance of unpopular products. Perhaps the special abilities
of the Supreme Court to legitimize public policy are associated
with perceptions of its decisionmaking processes. Perhaps the
edge that courts in general are thought to have in generating com-
pliance is associated with their special concern with procedural
fairness.

Indeed, it would not be surprising to find that courts are per-
ceived as the most procedurally fair of all political institutions,
since many people view them as insulated from “politics.” That is,
courts are thought to be non-political in the sense that they make
decisions on the basis of merit and logic, shunning the favoritism,
logrolling, and pork barrel so central to decisionmaking in other
political institutions (see, e.g., Jaros and Mendelsohn, 1967; Eng-
strom and Giles, 1972; Jaros and Roper, 1980). In courts, it is not
who one knows that controls the decision, but rather it is the mer-
its of one’s case. As the literature on procedural justice would hy-

4 Commenting a decade later, Adamany and Grossman (1983: 430) as-
serted: “It is no longer tenable to continue to continue to assert that the fail-
ure of attempts to curb the Court or overturn its policies lies in some wide-
spread public or elite support either for the justices’ decisions or for the Court
as an institution.”

5 Max Weber (1947) termed this “formal legitimation.” For a recent em-
pirical analysis of this concept, see McEwen and Maiman, 1986.

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472 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

pothesize, to the extent that courts are perceived as fair, their deci-
sions are more likely to be accepted as authoritative and final.

Consequently, there is reason to re-open the question of
whether the courts have special powers of legitimation. The gen-
eral hypothesis is that to the extent that an institution employs
fair decisionmaking procedures, it is perceived as legitimate and
citizens are more likely to comply with its decisions, even when
they are unpopular.6 I test this hypothesis by considering several
questions. To what degree do judicial decisions contribute to the
acceptance of unpopular political decisions? Do court decisions
have greater powers to legitimize than the decisions of other polit-
ical institutions? Are courts perceived as more procedurally fair
than other political institutions? Do perceptions of procedural
fairness in either a judicial or legislative institution contribute to
the efficacy of institutional decisions? To what degree does institu-
tional legitimacy contribute to compliance?

II. JUSTICE, LEGITIMACY, AND POLITICAL INTOLERANCE

I shall consider the problems of justice, legitimacy, and com-
pliance within the context of political tolerance and civil liberties.
In particular, my concern is with the role that political institutions
can play in encouraging citizens who are predisposed not to toler-
ate unpopular political minorities not to act on their intolerance.
The basic hypotheses under consideration are: (1) Institutional de-
cisions can block the behavioral consequences of attitudinal intol-
erance by getting citizens to accept non-repressive policy decisions7
as authoritative and final; (2) judicial institutions are more effec-
tive at this than are legislative institutions; (3) institutions per-
ceived as making decisions fairly are more effective at generating
compliance than are institutions not perceived as fair; and
(4) more legitimate institutions are more effective at bringing
about compliance than are less legitimate institutions. Because the
procedural justice literature rarely considers political problems of
this nature (but see Tyler, et al., 1985; Rasinski, et al., 1985; and
Tyler, forthcoming), it is perhaps useful to begin the inquiry with

6 Of course no one would argue that procedural perceptions are the sole
determinant of compliance. The procedural hypothesis is instead that percep-
tions of fair methods of decisionmaking have an independent impact on will-
ingness to accept an institutional decision as final and binding. For a more
complete consideration of the compliance problem, see Tyler (forthcoming).

7 This analysis is mainly concerned with the ability of institutional legiti-
macy to neutralize citizen intolerance. Of course, courts that ratify repressive
public policy may neutralize tolerant public opinion. My focus is on institu-
tional decisions that are democratic but that face an intolerant mass public.
This is justified because intolerance is so widespread among the mass public in
the United States (see, e.g., Gibson, in press) and because there is some evi-
dence that elites, including those who make decisions within political institu-
tions, are more tolerant than the ordinary public (see, e.g., Stouffer, 1955; Mc-
Closky and Brill, 1983). I do not gainsay that the processes, however, can work
in both democratic and anti-democratic directions.

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GIBSON 473

a digression to an actual civil liberties dispute. I use this conflict to

give some idea of how institutional legitimacy and procedural fair-
ness may influence acceptance of unpopular policy decisions. The
event on which I shall focus concerns the right of the American
Nazi Party to hold an anti-semitic demonstration in Skokie, Illi-
nois, a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago.

The dispute in Skokie revolved around the efforts of Frank
Collin and his National Socialist Party of America to hold a dem-
onstration in 1977.8 When confronted with the request to demon-
strate, the Village of Skokie promptly adopted three pieces of leg-
islation designed to control assemblies. Among the requirements
of the first ordinance were $350,000 liability and property damage
insurance, and a prohibition on demonstrations that would libel

specific religious, racial, ethnic, national, or regional groups. The
second ordinance forbade the dissemination of materials that
would libel groups, and outlawed markings and clothing of sym-
bolic significance. The last ordinance prohibited demonstrations in

military-style uniforms. All three ordinances were deemed decid-

edly unconstitutional by the federal trial and appellate courts (Col-
lin v. Smith, 447 F. Supp. 676 (N.D. Ill. 1978); and Collin v. Smith,
578 F.2d 1197 (7th Cir. 1978)).

For the purposes of this article, the importance of the Skokie

dispute is not its implications for constitutional law but instead its
lessons on compliance, tolerance, and repression. The citizens of
the village strongly and actively opposed the demonstration, even
to the point that some threatened violence if the Nazis were actu-

ally to demonstrate. Even the community leaders were united in

opposing the demonstration. Thus, there was a widespread intoler-
ant and anti-democratic consensus among the elites and masses in
Skokie.

At the same time, however, the dispute was brought to a rela-

tively democratic conclusion.9 The ordinances were invalidated,
and Collin was allowed to demonstrate (for various reasons, he
chose to demonstrate in Chicago instead). Thus, despite over-

whelming intolerance, the dispute was resolved without undue

compromise to basic civil liberties.
Barnum (1982) has argued that four factors were particularly

important in the Skokie-Nazi dispute. First, the political leaders of
Skokie acted undemocratically largely because they were forced to
do so by their constituents. Their own inclinations were much
more tolerant. Second, in this controversy (as in all political con-
troversies: see Gibson and Bingham, 1985), there was a substantial

gap between attitudinal intolerance and behavioral intolerance.

8 For accounts of this conflict, see Gibson and Bingham, 1985; Barnum,
1982; and Hamlin, 1980.

9 My understanding of democracy very closely parallels that of Dahl
(1971).

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474 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

Many of those who opposed the demonstration simply did not act
on their beliefs. Third, the policymaking process itself tended to
defuse the emotional and symbolic impact of the issue. By delay-
ing a decision and by defining it as a technical, legal dispute, the
process of adjudication in the courts helped to decrease the sali-
ence and emotional impact of the issue. Finally, there was residual
support for democratic procedural values among the elites and
masses in Skokie. Although many may have opposed the demon-
stration, there was overwhelming support for allowing the dispute
to be resolved through democratic procedures like adjudication.
Barnum (1982: 504) argues that “the existence of judicial mecha-
nisms for resolving civil liberties disputes must be accompanied by
something like consensual support among the political elites for
the propriety of resorting to the courts and the necessity of ac-
cepting, without question, the policy determinations of the courts”
(emphasis added). It is thus the legitimacy of the judiciary that
contributed to acceptance of a policy decision that was abhorred by
the overwhelming majority of the community.10 Consequently,
there is some evidence that public understandings of institutional
legitimacy and procedural justice tend to block or ameliorate the
political impact of political intolerance. Commitments to demo-
cratic procedures neutralize the politically damaging and anti-dem-
ocratic impact of political intolerance. This hypothesis will be sub-
jected to empirical testing.

III. DATA

My analysis is based on a national survey that was an exten-
sion of the 1987 General Social Survey (GSS), a nearly annual sur-
vey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC)
with funding from the National Science Foundation. (For details
on the sample see the Appendix). Respondents were randomly as-
signed one of the two versions of the questionnaire. All respon-
dents were asked a set of legislative questions (e.g., regarding a
city council), while half the respondents answered a set of judicial
questions on the “U.S. Supreme Court” and the remaining half an-
swered the same set of questions concerning a “local judge.” This
reduced the number of cases available for analysis of the judicial
questions but otherwise had no effect on the analysis due to the
random assignment of the questionnaire versions.11

10 A better test of the hypothesis would have been provided had the Na-
zis actually demonstrated in Skokie. Had they done so, some segment of the
population would have tried to stop the demonstration through any means
possible, including violence. Because the Nazis did not demonstrate, it is im-
possible to estimate the proportion of the population that would not have al-
lowed the demonstration to take place.

11 Copies of the relevant items are available from the author on request.

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GIBSON 475

IV. POLITICAL INTOLERANCE AND INSTITUTIONAL
INTERVENTION

A. Attitudinal Intolerance

The first question to be addressed is how much political intol-
erance in fact exists within the mass public. Although this seems
likely a relatively simple research problem, measurement issues
require a brief digression.

Political intolerance is “a willingness to restrict a disliked
group’s democratic rights based on the content of one’s views”
(Sullivan et al., 1985: 225). Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus (1982)
have argued that the concept makes little sense unless the target
of intolerance is disliked. One cannot tolerate that with which one
agrees: antipathy is a necessary precondition for tolerance. Conse-
quently, researchers must insure that the target groups used in tol-
erance surveys are disliked by each of the respondents. One way
of insuring this is to use the “least-liked” measurement approach.

Before asking respondents whether groups should be toler-
ated, the “least-liked” approach asks them to identify the politi-
cally active groups that they dislike the most. This insures that all
respondents are questioned about a greatly disliked political mi-
nority, even if the specific group varies across individuals. Follow-
ing the identification of this target, the respondent is asked
whether members of the group should be allowed to engage in cer-
tain types of political activity, such as giving speeches and running
for public office. This approach is thought to generate a more
valid measure of political tolerance.12

The subjects in the 1987 survey were first asked to identify
and rank order the four groups in politics that they disliked the
most. They were then asked the following question about the
group they named as most disliked:13

Now I’m going to ask you about a situation involving the
[MOST DISLIKED GROUP]. Suppose that the [NAME
OF GROUP] wanted to hold a demonstration here in your
neighborhood to advocate its political views. Would you
strongly support, support, oppose, or strongly oppose a de-
cision by the government to allow the demonstration to
take place?

The responses reveal a considerable amount of intolerance in the
United States: 45 percent strongly oppose allowing the demonstra-

12 A whole series of conceptual and operational issues surround this mea-
surement approach (see, e.g., Gibson, 1986; see also Mueller, 1988; Sullivan and
Marcus, 1988), but they are of little concern here. I have only used the tech-
nique to insure that all respondents are asked to tolerate a threatening activity
by a greatly disliked group. The approach is not used to generate a general
measure of political tolerance.

13 The most disliked group was the Ku Klux Klan (named by 32%), fol-
lowed by communists (24%), advocates of military government (11%), atheists
(11%), and Nazis (10%).

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476 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

tion; an additional 33 percent oppose it; while only 18 percent sup-
port allowing it (the remainder are uncertain).14

The analysis that follows is concerned with the degree to
which the intolerant attitudes of citizens are neutralized by the
tolerant decisions of legitimate institutions. Consequently, I have
little concern for the 18 percent of the sample that is initially tol-
erant (or with the 4 percent that is uncertain), but rather focus ex-
clusively on those who would not support a decision allowing the
demonstration.

B. Behavioral Intolerance

The above item measures attitudinal intolerance. In the short
term at least, few would argue that legitimate and fair political in-
stitutions would affect the attitudes of citizens. The central hy-
pothesis of this research is that the legitimacy of non-repressive
political institutions neutralizes the behavioral implications of the
intolerant attitudes of the mass public by getting citizens to accept
the authoritative decisions of the institution, abide by them, and
not to challenge them further. Thus, the first question that should
be addressed concerns the likelihood of a behavioral response
flowing from these attitudes. I consider this problem by asking the
subjects what they are inclined to do in response to the proposed
demonstration.15

It is useful to have a base-line measure of behavioral propensi-
14 I am not using these data to make any assertion about the absolute

level of tolerance and intolerance in the United States. Political intolerance is
a continuum, and no single item can tell us how much exists. Indeed, the mea-
sure I have used is a fairly difficult one in that it asks about the most disliked
group engaging in a highly threatening activity with a great deal of perceived
potential for violence, and it places the demonstration directly in the respon-
dent’s neighborhood. The severity of this stimulus as compared to the more
typical “should a communist be allowed to speak in your community” is con-
firmed in part by the considerably greater proportion of intolerant responses it
generates. For a more complete discussion of contemporary intolerance in the
United States, see Gibson (in press).

15 There is little doubt that a considerable chasm exists between simu-
lated or hypothetical behavior and actual action within a real civil liberties dis-
pute. Nonetheless, there are important reasons for studying hypothetical be-
havior. First, hypothetical behavior may be thought of as a behavioral
propensity. Reactions to any given dispute may diverge from the behavioral
propensity due to contextual factors, but the propensity nonetheless repre-
sents the central tendency (or most likely response, on average) of a larger
distribution of actual behaviors. Second, it is exceedingly difficult to study ac-
tual repressive political behavior because opportunities to repress one’s fellow
citizens do not emerge with the periodicity of elections, court appearances, and
other chances for political activism. Thus, researchers can rarely mobilize a
field study of these sporadic events. (For examples of studies that focus on
particular civil liberties disputes, see Gibson and Bingham, 1985; Gibson, 1987;
and Gibson and Tedin, 1988.) Although hypothetical behavior is not the same
as actual behavior, it is useful to try to take a step beyond the simple focus on
attitudes to determine if respondents themselves foresee behavioral conse-
quences of their beliefs. For an excellent study of hypothetical behavior in a
related area, see Muller (1979). On the use of hypothetical, or “role-playing,”
measures more generally, see Cooper (1976), and Forward, et al. (1976).

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GIBSON 477

ties before considering the impact of institutional decisions. Table
1 reports data on the responses to several behavioral possibilities
occasioned by the supposition that the demonstration was sched-
uled to take place next week.

The first thing to note in the table is that roughly one-half of
the subjects report that they would probably do something to try
to get the government to stop the demonstration (47.5% is either
somewhat or very unlikely to do nothing). Moreover, a relatively
small but not inconsequential minority say they would go beyond
conventional political activity to take direct actions against the
group, including actions that might be illegal. It thus appears that
levels of behavioral intolerance would be relatively high prior to
any decision by an authoritative political institution.

C. The Effect of Institutional Intervention

The question of greatest interest is whether institutional inter-
vention has any impact on willingness to allow the unpopular
political minority to exercise its civil liberties. The subjects were
asked to suppose that a decision to allow the demonstration had
been made by the local legislature (the city council or county gov-
ernment), and then by a court (for one-half the sample, the United
States Supreme Court; for the other half, a local judge). The legit-
imacy hypothesis predicts that the rulings of these institutions
should increase the likelihood of accepting the decision as final
and doing nothing further to challenge it. Table 2 reports data rel-
evant to this question.16

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Table 2 is the overall simi-
larity of the effects of the different institutional decisions on com-
pliance. Although there are some minor differences, a decision by
a local legislature generally has roughly the same impact on com-
pliance as does a decision by a local judge or the Supreme Court.
For instance, 52.5 percent report that they would be very or some-
what likely to do nothing after a legislative decision. The compa-
rable figure for a decision by a local judge is 53.5 percent. Slightly
greater compliance is observed after a decision of the Supreme
Court: 61.8 percent are unlikely to do anything further. Thus,
while there is little difference between the impact of the local
court and the local legislature, to the extent that the figures differ,
the Supreme Court has a slight edge in generating acceptance of
its decisions. Overall, the differences across institution are surpris-
ingly slight.17

16 Note that the actual text of the question directed toward the Supreme
Court was, “How likely is it that you would do nothing at the moment but
base your vote in the next election on getting new justices on the Court?”

17 A different way of assessing institutional differences involves changing
the unit of analysis from the respondent to the respondent-institution. In this
format, the responses to the compliance questions are “stacked” on top of one
another and thus do not distinguish between the type of institution, which is

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Table 1: Intolerant Behavioral Propensities

Likelihood of Action (%)

Very Somewhat Somewhat Very
Action Likely Likely Unlikely Unlikely Totala

Try to get the government to stop the demonstration
Try to get people to go to the demonstration and stop it in

any way possible, even if it meant breaking the law
Try to get the group not to hold its demonstration, even if

it meant doing some things against the group that are
illegal

Do nothing to try to stop the demonstration from taking
place

25.2
6.4

4.6

23.6

28.2
10.4

10.7

29.0

22.9
26.9

28.6

26.0

23.6
56.3

56.2

21.5

99.9 (933)b >

100.0 (936) U

100.1 (937) 0

0
T1

100.1 (928) C

C-I n
3A
-Q

a Those who said “don’t know” were omitted

from the calculations.

b N is in parentheses.

C!

z

T141 u
tI
II

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GIBSON 479

Table 2. Intolerant Behavioral Propensities, After Institutional
Intervention

Likelihood of Action (%)

Very or Somewhat
Somewhat or Very

Action Likely Unlikely Totala

Try to get people to go to the
demonstration and stop it in any
way possible, even if it meant
breaking the law

Local legislature
Local judge
U.S. Supreme Court

Try to get the institution’s decision
reversed by some other
government body

Local legislature
Local judge
U.S. Supreme Court

Do nothing at the moment but vote
against the [decisionmaker] at the
next election

Local legislature
Local judge
U.S. Supreme Court

Do nothing to try to stop the
demonstration from taking place

Local legislature
Local judge
U.S. Supreme Court

15.4
13.8
13.4

48.7
47.5
41.3

72.3
71.8
73.0

47.5
46.5
38.2

a Those who said “don’t know” were omitted
b N is in parentheses.

84.6 100.0 (936)b
86.2 100.0 (460)
86.6 100.0 (476)

51.3 100.0 (931)
52.5 100.0 (453)
58.7 100.0 (471)

27.7 100.0 (924)
28.2 100.0 (457)
27.0 100.0 (466)

52.5 100.0 (935)
53.5 100.0 (456)
61.8 100.0 (475)

from the calculations.

The data in Table 2 do not control for the response prior to
the institutional decision and may therefore be misleading because,
quite apart from any questions of institutional legitimacy, individu-
als vary in the likelihood of taking action in political disputes.
Consequently, Table 3 reports the likelihood of behavioral intoler-
ance after the legislative decision, controlling for the initial behav-
ioral propensity. The first hypothesis is that legislative action in-
creases the probability of doing nothing. To simplify matters, the

then used as a variable to assess response differences. This approach yields
statistically significant differences across institutions only on the “do nothing”
and “try to reverse the policy” items. However, for both of these eta equals
.08, indicating an extremely weak level of association. Thus, it is appropriate
to conclude that institutional differences in compliance responses are trivial.

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480 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

Table 3. The Influence of Institutional Legitimacy on Behavioral
Acceptance of Political Tolerance: Doing Nothing

Likelihood After Initial Likelihood of Acting (%)
Institutional Decision Unlikely Likely

Local legislature
Unlikely to act 71.0 31.7
Likely to act 29.0 68.3
Total 100.0 (486)a 100.0 (439)

Local judge
Unlikely to act 68.0 36.4
Likely to act 32.0 63.6
Total 100.0 (242) 100.0 (206)

U.S. Supreme Court
Unlikely to act 73.1 49.6
Likely to act 26.9 50.4
Total 100.0 (242) 100.0 (228)

a N is in parentheses.

data from the summary item on taking any action in response to
the decision are presented.

Nearly one-third of those who were initially inclined to take
action (very or somewhat unlikely to do nothing) report being less
likely to act after the legislative decision. It seems that the legisla-
tive decision significantly affected the chance of anti-democratic
action. On the other hand, among those initially disinclined to act,
the legislative decision seems to have made nearly 30 percent more
predisposed to take action. Thus, while the legislative decision de-
creased the likelihood of action among those initially predisposed
to act, it increased the likelihood among those initially predisposed
not to act.

The results are similar after a local court decision on the re-
quest to demonstrate.18 Among those initially inclined to act, 36.4

percent became less likely to act after the local court decision (see
Table 3). Similarly, among those who probably would not have ac-
ted initially, 32.0 percent became more likely to act. Thus, the
court decision increased the probability of compliance but at the
same time tended to increase the likelihood of action among those
who were initially disinclined to act.

Table 3 also reports the results of a similar question focused

18 It must be noted that the court questionsfollowed the questions on the
local legislative decision. Thus, Table 3 shows the effect of both the legislative
decision and the ruling of the court. It was simply not feasible to use a split
ballot to randomize the order of the legislative and court stimuli. Moreover,
the most common situation in real political conflict is for the legislative
branch (e.g., the city council) to act first and for the legislative action to be
reviewed by a court.

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GIBSON 481

on a decision by the Supreme Court.19 Although the findings are
generally like those for the local court and local legislature, the ef-
fect of the Court decision is substantially stronger. Nearly one-
half of those initially inclined to do something to block the demon-
stration report being less so inclined after a decision by the
Supreme Court. The effect is not overwhelming-50.4 percent still
intend not to comply with the Court’s decision-and there is an-
other group (26.9 percent) who would be mobilized to action by the
decision, but there is nonetheless some evidence of the Court’s ca-
pacity to engender compliance with unpopular political decisions.20

Why would an institutional decision incite action among re-
spondents who apparently were not so inclined in the first place?
This is a bit of a puzzle, and perhaps an important one. First, it is
important to rule out the possibility that the changes in both direc-
tions are simply random. While random responses would produce
approximately equal numbers of respondents showing greater and
lesser willingness to take actions, they would not yield a pattern of
consistent reactions to different institutions. In fact, there are
moderately strong relationships between willingness to take action
after the legislative and judicial decisions. For the legislative and
lower court items, the correlation is .51; for the legislative and
Supreme Court items, the correlation is .44 (based on collapsing
those who did not change and those who were less likely to act).
This suggests that some portion of the responses is due to the at-
tributes of the individual, not of the institution.21

19 For the sake of simplicity, the data in Table 3 have been dichotomized.
Using the original 4-category responses ranging from “very likely” to “very
unlikely,” among those initially predisposed to act, 42% became less likely to
act after a legislative ruling, 47% became less likely to act after a local court
decision, and 59% became less likely to act after a Supreme Court decision.
From these data, it appears that institutional decisions are important, that
there is a slightly greater impact on compliance of judicial decisions, and that
the Supreme Court is the most effective of the 3 institutions.

20 A different way to isolate the effect of court action on acceptance of an
unpopular political decision is to use as the base line the action probabilities
after the legislative decision rather than the initial likelihood of acting. This
reveals that nearly one-half of those who were initially quite inclined to act
were less likely to do so after a local court ruling, while slightly more than
one-half were less likely to act after a Supreme Court ruling. Among those
who would probably take action, 29% were less likely to act after a local court
decision (23% were more likely to act), while 23% were less likely to act after
a Supreme Court decision (17% were more likely to act). Thus the Supreme
Court is slightly but not greatly more effective at blocking action.

21 Another possible explanation is that some sort of social desirability ef-
fect is causing the probabilities of action to increase among those initially
predisposed to do nothing. Assuming that action is the socially desirable re-
sponse, there could be an unwillingness to report repeatedly to the interviewer
that no action would be taken. This tendency probably inflates the proportion
claiming to be willing to take action and does so disproportionately among
those initially disinclined to act.

On the other hand, there is no relationship between a widely used mea-
sure of susceptibility to social desirability (Crowne and Marlowe, 1960) and
willingness to take action before or after any of the institutional decisions, nor
does level of self-esteem correlate with the behavioral responses. This sug-

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482 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

Table 4. The Influence of Institutional Legitimacy on Behavioral
Acceptance of Political Tolerance: Get People to Stop the
Demonstration

Likelihood After Initial Likelihood of Acting (%)
Institutional Decision Unlikely Likely

Local legislature
Likely to act 95.1 32.0
Unlikely to act 4.9 68.0
Total 100.0 (777)a 100.0 (155)

Local judge
Likely to act 94.7 45.5
Unlikely to act 5.3 54.5
Total 100.0 (376) 100.0 (79)

U.S. Supreme Court
Likely to act 94.7 44.4
Unlikely to act 5.3 55.6
Total 100.0 (398) 100.0 (76)

a N is in parentheses.

It is possible that institutional action to allow the demonstra-
tion elicits a response because the respondent perceives that the
demonstration is more imminent. Perhaps some imagined, when
first asked about taking action, that it was unimportant to do any-
thing because the government would prohibit the demonstration.
Once they were told that the government had decided to allow the

demonstration, they saw no further obstacles and decided they had
to do something themselves. I cannot be certain about this inter-

pretation, because no data are available to test the hypothesis that
the institutional action increased the perceived threat of the dem-
onstration.

It is also useful to consider illegal and extra-legal action more

directly by focusing on the responses to the item asking whether
the respondent would be likely to “try to get people to go to the
demonstration and stop it in any way possible, even if it meant

breaking the law.” The hypothesis is that legislative and judicial
rulings reduce the likelihood of this sort of behavior. These data
are shown in Table 4.

Relatively few respondents report any likelihood of taking di-
rect action to stop the demonstration. Those so inclined, however,
show some tendency for an institutional ruling to decrease the

gests that the conclusions are unaffected by problems of a socially desirable
tendency toward political action.

Moreover, based on interviewer judgments, there is no evidence that these
subjects were any less interested in the interviews, or had a lower understand-
ing of the questions. Using more objective measures, the respondents did not
have less political knowledge and their opinions on the demonstration were
not more intense.

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GIBSON 483

chance of anti-democratic behavior. For instance, a legislative de-
cision reduces the chances of direct action for 32 percent of those
initially predisposed to act. Comparable figures for the local
courts and Supreme Court are 45.5 percent and 44.4 percent, re-
spectively. Unlike the findings regarding any sort of action, there
is little difference between the local courts and the Supreme Court
in ability to dissuade illegal action. Nor is there a similar mobiliza-
tion effect, for only a handful of respondents would be stimulated
by an institutional decision to engage in this sort of behavior.22

Thus, these data provide some evidence that institutional rul-
ings affect the likelihood of compliance with tolerant but unpopu-
lar policies, and that the combined effect of judicial institutions
and legislative actions is slightly more efficacious on this score
than legislative action alone. The effect, however, is modest. More
importantly, there is no direct evidence that anything about the in-
stitutional decision is related to perceptions of its fairness. Per-
haps the observed effect is due to nothing more than pragmatic
judgments about the likelihood that resistance to institutional de-
cisions will produce results. Once a decision has been made,
through whatever sorts of processes, people may simply judge that
the odds of overturning it are slight. It is therefore necessary to
consider the procedural justice hypothesis more directly.

D. Institutional Procedures

The literature on procedural justice suggests that willingness
to accept and comply with an unpopular decision is in part a func-
tion of perceptions of the fairness of the procedures used to make
the decision (see, e.g., Adler, et al., 1983; McEwen and Maiman,
1981, 1984; Tyler, 1984, 1988; Tyler, et al., 1985; and Lind and Tyler,
1988). This suggests that perceptions of the institutional decision-
making processes may contribute to compliance. More specifically,
I hypothesize that to the extent the decisionmaking processes of
these institutions are perceived as fair, the behavioral conse-
quences of intolerant attitudes will be minimized.

Table 5 reports data on the perceptions of the decisionmaking
process in the local government council (such as the city council
and the board of alderman), in the local courts, and in the
Supreme Court. First, it should be remembered that the numbers
of cases for the judicial institutions is roughly one-half that of the
local council due to the split-ballot format. Second, a significant
portion of the respondents claims to be uncertain as to the nature
of decisionmaking within these institutions. The table shows the
respondents perceiving the decisions to be fair as a percentage of

22 Summarizing the uncollapsed data (not reported in the table), 38% of
those very likely to engage in direct action to stop the demonstration were less
so inclined after a legislative decision; while 53% and 50% were less so inclined
after a local court and Supreme Court decision, respectively.

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484 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

Table 5. Perceptions of Procedural Fairness in Institutional
Decisionmaking

Percent Perceiving Procedural Fairness
Local Local U.S. Supreme

Decisional Attribute Legislature Court Court

Considers the views of all sides 35.0 26.5 26.2
to an issue before making a
decision

Gives interested citizens an 68.2 54.7 49.5
opportunity to express their
views before making a
decision

Makes decisions only after 52.2 62.2 73.2
they assemble all the
relevant information on an
issue

Can be counted on to make 57.5 63.4 69.7
decisions in a fair way

all respondents answering the question (the uncertain respondents
are included in the denominator). Third, most respondents per-
ceive the decisionmaking processes within all three institutions to
be relatively fair. Of those who are not uncertain, substantially
more perceive the institutional decisionmaking to be fair rather
than unfair. The most negative sentiment is on whether the local
council considers the views of all sides to an issue before making a
decision (35% believe that the council seldom does so).

Nonetheless, there are some important inter-institutional dif-
ferences. The institution perceived to make decisions most fairly
is the United States Supreme Court, in part because it makes deci-
sions on the basis of full information. On the other hand, the
Court is seen as less likely to give citizens the opportunity to ex-
press their views, even if it does consider all sides to an issue.

Generally, the local legislature is perceived as most fair in
terms of accessibility to citizens. Fully two-thirds perceive the lo-
cal council as providing citizens an opportunity to be heard, even if

they are less sanguine about whether their views are actually con-
sidered in making decisions. While the local legislature and local
courts are evaluated similarly in overall judgments in decision-
making fairness, local courts are perceived as being more likely to
make a decision based on full information.

For all three institutions, the strongest correlate of general
evaluations of fairness (“counted on to make decisions in a fair
way”) is the item concerning whether all relevant information is
assembled before making a decision (Pearson correlation coeffi-
cients, r, range from .50 to .59). Second most important in each in-

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GIBSON 485

stance is the item on whether citizens are given an opportunity to
express their views (r correlations range from .35 to .48). Those
who perceive the local council as fair are generally likely to per-
ceive local courts as fair (r = .43) and are somewhat more likely to
perceive the United States Supreme Court as fair (r = .27). The
crucial question for this analysis is whether these perceptions of
decisionmaking fairness have any impact upon willingness to com-
ply with the decisions of the institution. This hypothesis can be
tested using the data shown in Table 6.

Perceptions of the fairness of the decisionmaking processes
within these institutions have virtually no impact on willingness
to accept the institutional decision as final and binding. I base
this conclusion on the measures of the likelihood of challenging
the action of the institution shown in Table 6. For instance, con-
sider the likelihood of doing nothing after the institutional deci-
sion. The correlation between perceptions of institutional fairness
and the likelihood of doing nothing is .01 for the legislative deci-
sion: -.01 for the local court decision; and .01 for the Supreme
Court decision. Even when we control for the initial likelihood of
acting, there is little relationship.23 It is clear that citizens report
that they are no more willing to accept an unpopular decision if
they perceive that it is fairly made than when they do not perceive
that it is fair.

A different way of testing this hypothesis is simply to regress
willingness to comply with the decision of the institution on per-
ceived fairness in decisionmaking processes. With or without the
control for initial behavioral propensities, the conclusions are the
same: Perceptions of procedural fairness have little or no impact
on willingness to comply. The maximum R2 observed is .04, which
results from regressing acceptance of the decision of the local
council on the four perceived attributes of its decisionmaking pro-
cess. Perceptions of procedural justice in Supreme Court and local
court decisionmaking have no impact whatsoever on willingness to
accept the judicial decisions as final. Where institutional decision-
making processes are perceived as being more fair, acceptance of
the unpopular institutional decision is not enhanced.24 This analy-
sis suggests that to the extent that there is any impact on compli-
ance that flows from institutional ratification of unpopular deci-

23 Due to differences in question wording, this comparison can only be
made for 2 sorts of activity: doing nothing to try to stop the demonstration
and trying to get people to go to the demonstration and stop it in any way pos-
sible, even if it meant breaking the law. The analysis is of the difference in
the likelihoods after and before the respondent is given information about the
decision of the institution. The only significant relationship observed is be-
tween perceptions of local court fairness and the likelihood of doing something
(p = .02), but it is not monotonic and not interpretable.

24 Shifting the unit of analysis to the respondent-institution merely con-
firms this conclusion. When willingness to comply is regressed on the 4 fair
perceptions and 2 dummy variables representing the 3 institutions, the R2 is
.02.

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486 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

Table 6. Impact of Perceptions of Procedural Fairness on Compliancea

Procedural Perceptions

Opportunity Full
Considers to Express Information Fair

Action All Sides Views Decisions Decisions

Local legislature
Try to stop the

demonstration, even
illegally

Try to get the
government’s decision
reversed

Vote against the
decisionmakers in the
next election

Do nothing

Local court

Try to stop the
demonstration, even
illegally

Try to get the
government’s decision
reversed

Vote against the
decisionmakers in the
next election

Do nothing
U.S. Supreme Court

Try to stop the
demonstration, even
illegally

Try to get the
government’s decision
reversed

Vote against the
decisionmakers in the
next election

Do nothing

-.00

-.09

.02

.06

.01

-.17

.02

–

.03

.05

-.11

-.04

.07

.13

-.07

.03

.02

.16 .09

-.05

-.03

-.10 .03

-.01 .01

.03 -.04

-.08

-.18

-.07

-.06

.08 -.03

-.01

.07

-.01

-.11

-.04

-.01

.03

-.03

.03

.01

.08 -.01

.01

.03

.00 .01

a Entries are Pearson correlation coefficients. All variables have been
coded so that negative relationships are hypothesized.

sions, this impact is not associated with the perceived fairness of
the institutional decisionmaking processes.25

25 It is most curious that to the extent that the perceived fairness of the
institutional decisionmaking processes has any impact on compliance, it is the
legislative institution that is effective, not the judicial institutions. This is curi-
ous because the argument is commonly made that judicial institutions have

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GIBSON 487

E. Legitimacy

I have shown that a decision by the Supreme Court has some
impact on compliance but that the impact is not associated with
perceptions of institutional fairness. Why then are citizens more
likely to accept an unpopular political decision after the Supreme
Court has rendered its opinion? One reason may be that the Court
is perceived as a legitimate institution, irrespective of whether its
decisionmaking procedures are perceived as fair (or for that mat-
ter not perceived at all). As Rasinski, Tyler, and Fridkin (1985)
and Tyler (forthcoming) have shown, perceptions of legitimacy
have an independent impact on compliance. Indeed, the original
Dahl (1957) hypothesis was grounded in assumptions about the le-
gitimacy of the Supreme Court.

No direct measure of legitimacy is available here, and indeed
it is not obvious that legitimacy can be directly measured in survey
research. Instead, I employ an index of diffuse support26-a
closely related concept (cf. Easton, 1975)-and I hypothesize that
those who are more supportive of the Court as an institution are
more likely to accept its decisions as authoritative.

The data provide no support for the hypothesis: The relation-
ship between the diffuse support measure and willingness to ac-
cept the Supreme Court’s decision is a trivial .07, and is not in the
hypothesized direction. Like procedural perceptions, it seems that
these attitudes have little impact on compliance.

This relationship may be confounded by two factors. First, it
does not control for the initial behavioral propensity, and, second,
it may be influenced by those who are more likely to act after a
Court decision. To consider whether the hypothesis suffers due to
these data maladies, I have constructed a more sensitive measure
of change in behavior that ranges from negative scores that indi-
cate a greater likelihood of compliance (that is, inaction) after the
decision to positive scores indicating a greater likelihood of non-
compliance after the decision. So the conditional effects can be ob-
served, two separate analyses are performed. The first compares
those who are more likely to comply with those who were unaf-
fected by the Court decision, while the second compares those
more likely not to comply with those who did not change. Both

special powers of legitimation beyond those of legislative institutions. Here,
however, is evidence (albeit slight) of exactly the opposite effect. Even more
curiously, it is not the responsiveness of the local legislature to constituency
opinion that is most influential but instead the belief that the local council
considers all relevant information in making decisions. One might have ex-
pected that this aspect of procedural fai ness would be the forte of judicial, not
legislative, institutions. Because these relationships are so weak, it is perhaps
prudent not to try to explain them.

26 The conceptualization, operationalization, and validation of this mea-
sure are reported in Caldeira and Gibson (1989). The correlations between dif-
fuse support and perceptions of procedural fairness range from .16 to .35.

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Table 7. The Impact of Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Diffuse Support on Compliance: United States Supreme Court

Change in Behavior*
More Likely to Comply More Likely Not to Comply

Attitude r b 3 r b 3

Procedural perceptions
Considers all sides .07 .13 .15** -.11 -.09 -.11
Opportunity to express views -.04 -.05 -.06 -.04 -.04 -.05
Full information decisions .04 .06 .05 .04 .01 .01
Fair decisions -.01 -.04 -.04 .06 .07 .07

Diffuse support -.13 -.19 -.20** -.01 .05 .05
R2 .04 .02

* r = Pearson correlation coefficient, b = unstandardized regression coefficient, 1 = standardized regression coefficient.
** Significant at .01 or less

co

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GIBSON 489

the procedural justice variables and diffuse support are employed
as predictors. The results are shown in Table 7.

Diffuse support emerges as the best predictor of compliance:
Those who are supportive of the Court are significantly more
likely to comply with its decisions even when they are disagreea-
ble. The other significant relationship-between a procedural per-
ception and compliance-is not in the predicted direction: Those
who believe that the Supreme Court seldom considers all sides to
an issue are more likely to comply. This may reflect the percep-
tion that it is futile to challenge the decisions of the Court because
the justices are unlikely to take contrary views into account when
making their decisions. None of the predictors accounts for those
who are more likely to act after a decision by the Court. Indeed,
the directions of most of the relationships are not as predicted.

Thus there is some evidence that the legitimacy of the Court,
at least as reflected in levels of diffuse support, affects compliance
with unpopular decisions. No such evidence exists for perceptions
of procedural justice.

F. Opinion Leaders

It is sometimes suggested that while the impact of court deci-
sions on the ordinary mass public is not great, their impact on
opinion leaders (variously defined) is more substantial. It is these
opinion leaders who in turn structure the perceptions of ordinary
citizens through a “two-step” flow of information. Thus it is useful
to consider whether the research findings reported here also char-
acterize opinion leaders.

Opinion leadership is operationalized in terms of self-reports
of the frequency with which others ask for the respondent’s opin-
ions.27 Responses were collected using a trichotomous response
set; whether the respondents are very often, sometimes, or hardly
ever asked for their opinions. I hypothesize that the effect of pro-
cedural perceptions is more significant on opinion leaders.

Opinion leaders are only slightly more likely to be tolerant of
the demonstration in the first place. Among those who are intol-
erant (the group of concern throughout this article), opinion lead-
ers do not differ from other citizens in their perceptions of the
procedural elements of judicial or legislative decisionmaking. Ta-
ble 8 reports the evidence on whether opinion leaders who per-
ceive that the decisions of these institutions are fairly made are
more likely to comply with unpopular policies.

There is some evidence that the procedural perceptions of the

27 Two other variables indicate opinion leadership: (1) how often the re-
spondent attempts to persuade others how to vote and (2) attentiveness to the
United States Supreme Court. None of the substantive findings reported here
is dependent upon the choice of the specific indicator of opinion leadership.
Additional details on the attributes of the opinion leaders are available from
the author.

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490 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

Table 8. The Impact of Perceptions of Procedural Fairness on
Procedural Compliance, by Opinion Leadershipa

Frequency of Multiple Correlation Between Perceptions
Opinion Giving of Fairness and Compliance

Local legislature
Often gives opinions .13 (79)
Sometimes gives opinions .05 (374)
Hardly ever gives opinions .04 (412)

Local court
Often gives opinions .08 (41)
Sometimes gives opinions .03 (201)
Hardly ever gives opinions .04 (181)

U.S. Supreme court
Often gives opinions .14 (38)
Sometimes gives opinions .03 (170)
Hardly ever gives opinions .01 (228)

a Entries are R2. The figures in parentheses are the numbers of cases on
which the coefficients are based. Four procedural perceptions are used
as predictors of compliance.

opinion leaders do affect their willingness to accept an institu-
tional decision as binding. The most powerful effect is in terms of
a decision of the Supreme Court or local legislature, followed by a
decision of a lower court. When a decision is perceived as more
fairly made, opinion leaders are more likely to report a willing-
ness to comply with the unpopular institutional decision. Thus,
we find some support for the procedural hypothesis in this seg-
ment of the population.

There is also a considerably greater effect of legitimacy on
compliance among opinion leaders. The addition of the diffuse
support measure adds 7 percent to the explained variance within
opinion leaders, while the increment within the other two groups
is trivial. Willingness to comply among opinion leaders is thus
contingent upon both perceptions of procedural justice and institu-
tional support for the Supreme Court.

These conclusions are limited to some degree by the relatively
small number of respondents who are identified as opinion leaders,
which reflects the fairly small segment of the American popula-
tion who see themselves in this role. Thus while the effect of pro-
cedural perceptions might not be trivial, the proportion of the pop-
ulation affected by such perceptions is quite small. Additional
research is needed to test the stability of these findings for special
populations.28

28 It is tempting to analyze the views of these opinion leaders further, but
the small numbers of cases available for analysis makes it prudent not to ex-
pand this line of analysis.

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GIBSON 491

V. CONCLUSION

This analysis shows that institutional intervention can play
some role in insuring citizen compliance with unpopular policy de-
cisions. To some extent, the antidemocratic implications of the
political intolerance so commonly observed in the United States
are neutralized when institutions make policy decisions to protect
unpopular political minorities. The results suggest that the legiti-
mizing capacity of judicial institutions exceeds that of legislative
institutions, although not by much. The United States Supreme
Court appears to be slightly more effective at stimulating compli-
ance than lower courts.

At the same time, the procedural fairness hypothesis does not
fare particularly well. Decisions that are perceived as more fairly
made, within both the legislative and judicial contexts, do not nec-
essarily engender greater compliance within the mass public.
Even cross-institutional differences in perceptions of fairness can-
not account for the variance in willingness to comply. The effect
of procedural concerns is greater among opinion leaders, but this is
a relatively small segment of the population, and the research has
not been able to address the processes through which opinion lead-
ers affect the views of others.

Research based on actual litigation demonstrates a signifi-
cantly greater effect of perceptions of procedural fairness (see
Lind and Tyler, 1988). Perhaps losing in an actual dispute creates
such cognitive discomfort and dissonance that individuals are com-
pelled to claim some sort of satisfaction with the decision, even if
it is only in terms of how the decision was made. In hypothetical
disputes such as the one on which I have focused, this dissonance
is surely not generated, making it unnecessary to seek solace
through satisfaction with procedure. Moreover, since few have di-
rect experience from which to judge the fairness of local courts,
the local legislature, or the Supreme Court, the procedural meas-
ures are tapping only abstract views, which are notoriously poor
predictors of behavior in actual controversies. Assessments of fair-
ness grounded in experience are no doubt stronger predictors of
compliance (cf. Tyler, forthcoming). These are just some of the
ways in which the real and the hypothetical might diverge; there
are many more that suggest caution in relying too heavily on the
results of this analysis.

At the same time, it is not clear that we should generalize
from litigant satisfaction with adjudicatory processes to the more
general and diffuse world of politics. At a minimum, litigants are
engaged in the dispute, with disengagement being a costly alterna-
tive. Citizens involved in civil liberties disputes can easily and rel-
atively costlessly withdraw from the conflicts and resume a more
normal position of apathy and complacency. To withdraw from lit-
igation means losing; to withdraw from a political dispute may ac-

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492 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

tually mean winning. Moreover, citizens do not bear direct respon-
sibility for carrying the dispute in politics. It is possible, indeed
profitable, to become a free-rider. As a consequence, the process
of disengagement generates few costs. These differences in the
types of disputes may well mean that procedural concerns are of
lesser significance in politics than in the courthouse.

It is also unclear whether we should generalize these findings
beyond the late 1980s. It is possible that the period of sustained ju-
dicial activism that the United States has witnessed since the 1960s
has eroded any pre-existing abilities of courts to legitimize public
policy. As Caldeira (1986) has shown, judicial activism seems to re-
duce support for the judiciary (but see Lehne and Reynolds, 1978).
Perhaps this activism has exhausted stores of judicial legitimacy
that prior to the 1960s were in fact adequate to legitimize public
policy. If so, the differences we observe in this analysis may be
considerably muted compared to earlier periods of American his-
tory.

The courts in the United States also have a special problem of
legitimacy that makes them unlikely candidates for generating cit-
izen compliance. The decisions of federal courts can always be
challenged on accountability grounds. Because federal judges are
appointed for life terms, they are not responsible to the electorate,
and therefore their unpopular decisions are particularly vulnera-
ble to charges of illegitimacy (cf. Cooper, 1988). At the same time,
as the election of most state judges has made them more accounta-
ble through more competitive and more partisan campaigns, their
basic fairness and impartiality have become suspect. Especially
with the ticklish issue of campaign contributions from litigants (ac-
tual or potential), these courts have few reserves of legitimacy that
they can share with other political institutions. Thus, whatever le-
gitimizing ability the judiciary may have once had is likely to de-
cline (cf. Caldeira and Gibson, 1989).

It seems that something other than procedures leads to accept-
ance of unpopular political decisions. What is it about the deci-
sions of institutions that increases the likelihood of compliance?
Institutional legitimacy is part of the answer, but there are several
other possibilities. Citizens may simply comply with the decisions
of political institutions out of fear of sanctions. As the dispute
over housing integration in Yonkers, New York, in 1988 revealed,
many citizens will not abide by bitterly opposed decisions without
direct coercion. Perhaps what has been ascribed to legitimacy is
actually best attributable to the coercive potential of political insti-
tutions (cf. Hyde, 1983).

More generally, compliance may be the result of rational cal-
culations by citizens and may have little to do with a sense of obli-
gation to countenance unpopular decisions. Coercion may be an
important part of this calculus, but so too might estimates of the
likelihood of reversing a political decision. Perhaps it is the final-

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GIBSON 493

ity of the decisions of the Supreme Court that encourages citizens
to comply, rather than any notion that the Court is an appropriate
and proper institution or that its decisionmaking processes are fair.

Finally, one might question whether legitimacy is necessarily
benchmarked by acceptance of unpopular decisions. Is the asser-
tion by the attorney general of the United States that a Supreme
Court decision is not the final and supreme law of the land a de-
nial of institutional legitimacy? When a state legislator introduces
a bill to require prayers in public schools, is this action a denial of
Court legitimacy? Or when a presidential candidate calls for flag-
salute legislation that appears to be inconsistent with prior Court
decisions, is this a repudiation of the legitimacy of the institution?
Perhaps all can agree that the failure to make this assertion or to
introduce this bill or to call for such legislation might be indicative
of institutional legitimacy, but challenges to public policy-
whether that policy is made by courts or legislatures-are not so
clearly evidence of threats to institutional legitimacy. In a polity
that is ever changing, it seems unreasonable to use willingness to
attempt to change public policy as an index of the illegitimacy of
the institution.

From the point of view of civil liberties and political tolerance,
these findings suggest that the intervention of courts and legisla-
tures may have some limited effect on the willingness of citizens to
tolerate their most hated political enemies. Yet it is hard to be
sanguine on the basis of these findings. Despite a decision by the
United States Supreme Court, a significant proportion of citizens is
still willing to challenge the rights of political minorities. To the
extent that this intolerance is neutralized, it is probably through a
mixture of processes. Some accept the rulings of political institu-
tions as authoritative; some view it as futile to pursue dissent any
further, and some would attempt to change the decision were
there a low-cost means of doing so. Whatever special legitimizing
powers the courts have probably play only a minor role in the
overall political equation.29

Perhaps the most important contribution of the judiciary
under conditions of intense political conflict is that courts vastly
slow the process of reaching a decision, thus allowing passions to
subside. Courts also employ a language and process of decision-
making to which ordinary citizens are not privy. The legitimacy of
these institutions then is not marked by citizen willingness to com-
ply with unpopular court decisions but is instead registered by citi-
zen willingness to submit the issue to the courts in the first place.

29 However, since courts (especially the federal courts) are typically insu-
lated from direct majority pressures for tyrannical policy, this finding of a
slight difference may be of greater practical consequence. An institution that
can influence the majority to accept unpopular decisions but that is relatively
insulated from direct accountability to the majority can serve a very important
function on the minority rights side of the democratic equation.

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494 UNDERSTANDINGS OF JUSTICE

The manner in which political systems allocate freedom and
justice, for the majority and especially for the minority, is of cen-
tral importance in the study of politics. This analysis represents a
small step toward understanding the complex processes whereby
legal institutions can depend on fairness and legitimacy to control
political intolerance, and ultimately to contribute to the mainte-
nance of democracy.

APPENDIX: THE SURVEY DESIGN

The 1987 General Social Survey (GSS) was conducted in the
spring with a response rate of approximately 75 percent. Its sam-
ple is a full probability sample. In June and July, the respondents
in the 1987 GSS were resurveyed. Of the 1,466 subjects in the
spring GSS, 1,106 were eligible to be interviewed. (NORC reserved
approximately 350 respondents for possible use in future panel
studies. These subjects were not eligible to be re-interviewed.)
This subsample was selected randomly, within gender strata. Be-
cause the 1987 GSS cross-section had a relatively large differential
non-response rate by gender, there is some gender imbalance in
the pool of subjects eligible for the second interview. Conse-
quently, stratified random sampling was thought desirable. For
the re-interviews, males and females were selected with equal
probability. Approximately 87 percent of these subjects were re-
interviewed. Most of these were in-person interviews, although
because some subjects had moved, a small percentage were con-
ducted by telephone.

The 1987 GSS also included a special oversample of 353 black
respondents, which was also a full probability sample. Extraordi-
nary efforts had to be mounted to draw this supplementary sam-
ple: roughly five thousand households nationwide were sampled
and contacted to locate the black subjects. Their response rate was
79 percent. All of these subjects were eligible for the re-interview,
and re-interviews were successfully completed with nearly 90 per-
cent of the black subjects in the original sample. The black over-
sample also overrepresents females. Because the universe of the
black oversample was selected for the re-interview project, no
sampling techniques could ameliorate this problem. Thus, inter-
views were completed with a total of 1,267 respondents. Since the
sample is stratified by race, most analyses are conducted on
weighted data.

Special thanks are due Tom Smith and Jim Davis, co-principal
investigators on the GSS, and the GSS Board of Overseers for
their assistance on this project. Dick Rubin at the NORC was in-
strumental in bringing the re-interview survey to its highly suc-
cessful conclusion.

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GIBSON 495

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• Article Contents

p. [469]

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• Issue Table of Contents

Law and Society Review, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1989

Front Matter [pp. 341 – 342]

From the Editor [pp. 343 – 345]

The Dynamics of Informal Procedure: The Case of a Public Housing Eviction Board [pp. 347 – 398]

Law and Glasnost’: Some Thoughts about the Future of Judicial Review under Socialism [pp. 399 – 447]

Gazing into the Crystal Ball: Can Jurors Accurately Predict Dangerousness in Capital Cases? [pp. 449 – 468]

Understandings of Justice: Institutional Legitimacy, Procedural Justice, and Political Tolerance [pp. 469 – 496]

The Role of Turkish Secular Law in Changing the Lives of Rural Muslim Women, 1950-1970 [pp. 497 – 523]

Back Matter

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

8CI.NC. @DI”.CT8

JOlJRNAL
OF CRIMINAL
JlJSTICE

Pergamon
Journal ofCriminaJ Justice 31 (2003

)

475-492

Robin Shepard Engel.

Division of Criminal Justice. University of Cincinnati, P. O. Box 210389, Cincinnati. 08 4522/-OJ89, USA

Abstract

The importance of suspects’ resistance toward police officers has almost always been described in tenns of its
influence on police behavior. Given the cenb’ality of citizens’ resistance in the literature on police behavior, it is
surprising that so little attention has been focused on explaining suspects’ resistance independent of its influence
on police behavior. This research examined the factors influencing multiple measures of suspects’ resistance using
systematic observation data collected in 1977 from twenty-four departments in three metropolitan areas. The
findings show that non-White suspects were more likely to be noncompliant toward White officers but were not
more likely to show more aggressive forms of resistance (e.g., verbal aggression, physical aggression, or
disrespect). In addition, female suspects were more likely to be disrespectful toward offICers compared to male
suspects. The relevance of these findings for future research is discussed.
C> 2003 Elsevier Ltd. AU rights reserved.

Introduction

The importance of suspects’ resistance and de-
meanor toward police officers has typically been
described in tenJJS of its influence on police behavior.
Ethnographic studies of police behavior have consis-
tently suggested that suspects who refuse to defer to
an officers’ authority or definition of the situation
were more likely to be sanctioned by police through
formal or informal means (Bittner, 1974; Brown,
1981; Skolnick, 1966; Westley, 1953, 1970). Like-
wise, the bulk of prior quantitative research examin-
ing demeanor analyzed the influence of citizens’
disrespect on police behavior. That is, citizens’ de-
meanor was examined strictly as a predictor variable
of police behavior during police-citizen encounters.
With only two exceptions (Klinger, 1994; Mastrofski,
Worden, & Snipes, 1995), this body of research
reported that suspects who acted in disrespectful

ways were more likely to be sanctioned through
~t, citations, or the use of force by police officers
(Black, 1980; Engel, Sobol, & Worden, 2000; Lund-
man, 1974, 1994, 1996; Smith & Visher, 1981;
Worden, 1989; Worden & Shepard, 1996).

Although research examined differences in the
influence of separate measures of demeanor on police
behavior, to date, little empirical work examined
suspects’ demeanor and resistance toward police
explicitly. Given the centrality of suspects’ demeanor
in the literature on police behavior, it was surprising
that so little attention focused on explaining suspects’
displays of disrespect independent of their influence
on police behavior. Therefore, it is unknown whether
indicators of social stratification and the stakes for
establishing and maintaining social identity during
police-citizen encounters influence displays of resis-
tance and disrespect by suspects toward officers.

In contrast to the scant empirical research examin-
ing citizens’ resistance and disrespect toward police,
the literature examining citizens’ attitudes toward
police had a rich history. As a result of findings from
the Kerner Commission in ) 967, which reported that

. Tel.: +1-513-556-5827; fax: +1-513-556-3303.

E-mail address: robin.engel@uc.edu (R.S. Engel).

;-.7-23S2J1)3/s – see front matter 02003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

476 R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 31 (2003) 475-492

been established that researchers can examine changes
in the predictors of citizens’ resistance over time. This
study applied both sociological stratification theories
and social-psychological perspectives to examine
police-citizen encounters. Hypotheses regarding the
influence of social stratification. propensity for ag-
gression, and the stakes of maintaining social identities
during police-citizen encounters over suspects’ dis-
plays of resistance and disrespect toward police are
presented and tested with multivariate analyses.

The size and richness of the PSS data offered a
unique opportunity to examine the potential predic-
tors of multiple measures of suspects’ resistance
during police-citizen encounters that were not read-
ily available and/or measured in more current data. In
the PSS data set, resistance toward police was con-
ceptualized and measured in four different forms:
noncompliance, verbal aggression, physical aggres-
sion, and disrespect. Utilizing these measures of
suspects’ resistance, multivariate analyses showed
that the strongest and most consistent predictor of
resistance was the use of alcohol or drugs by sus-
pects. In addition, non-White suspects were more
likely to be noncompliant toward White officers but
were not more likely to display other more aggressive
types of resistance toward officers (e.g., verbal ag-
gression, physical aggression. or disrespect). Also,
contrary to expectations, female suspects were more
likely than male suspects to be classified by observers
as disrespectful toward officers. The implications of
these findings for future research are explored.

Defining resistance during police-citizen
encounters

Klinger’s (1994, 1996b) null findings regarding
the influence of suspects’ demeanor on police behav-
ior led to his critique of the literature that, in
summary, suggested researchers misconceptualized
and improperly measured suspects’ demeanor. He
argued that physical resistance should not be consid-
ered a form of disrespect, but rather that it should be
considered an illegal act that is likely to influence
police behavior. Worden, Shepard, and Mastrofski
(1996, p. 328), however, argued that ethnographic
research suggested that officers responded to extreme
forms of disrespect not necessarily because they were
illegal behavior, but because these actions repre-
sented affronts to their authority (Bittner, 1974; Van
Maanen, 1974, 1978). As such, even affronts of the
greatest gravity (e.g., physical aggression) represent a
form of negative demeanor toward officers. Worden
et al. concluded that many diverse (and sometimes
subtle) forms of citizen behavior may be character-
ized by police officers as disrespectful (p. 326).

there was a national crisis in race relations and a
profound and deep-seeded hostility between minority
citizens and police officers (Williams & Murphy,
1990), extensive research was conducted that exam-
ined the relationships between citizens’ characteristics
(particularly citizens’ race) and their attitudes and
satisfaction with police. This line of research has
continued to the present day, with findings over-
whelmingly suggesting that minorities, males, juve-
niles, and citizens of lower social-economic status
have more negative attitudes toward police compared
to Whites, females, adults, and citizens of higher
socioeconomic status (for a review, see Hurst & Frank,
2000; Taylor, Turner, Esbensen, & Winfree, 2001).
Unfortunately, such an extensive body of knowledge
does not exist for predicting citizens’ actions-and
more specifically, their resistance-toward police.
While the empirical fmdings regarding citizens’ atti-
tudes remained relatively consistent across the past
forty years, it is unknown if the patterns of citizens’
resistance toward police have changed.

The current study attempted to fill this void by
establishing baseline measures and predictors of citi-
zens’ resistance toward officers using data collected in
1977 for the Police Services Study (pSS}-one of the
largest and most respected systematic observational
studies of police officers to date. The dated nature of
the PSS data may somewhat limit its generalizability to
current urban policing. Certainly, policing has changed
dramatically in the last twenty-five years-but have
citizens’ reactions toward police changed? There are
some indications that the interactions between citizens
and police today appear relatively consistent to those
experienced in the late I 970s. For example. current
observational studies reported similar types of inci-
dents and problems that police encounter and consis-
tency in the use of arrest, force, and other coercive
actions to handle these situations (Mastrofski, Snipes,
Parks, & Maxwell. 2000; Novak, Frank. Smith. &

Engel, 2002; Parks, Mastrofski, Dejong, & Gray.
1999). Likewise, as previously noted, citizens’ per-
ceptions and attitudes toward police have not dramat-
ically changed. Larger social issues including poverty
and race are as salient today as they were twenty-five
years ago, as are the continuing problems between
police and citizens perpetuated by social contexts (for
example. see Velez, 200 I).

Nevertheless, the purpose of the present research
was to explore in)portant issues that had been previ-
ously ignored and to provide a contribution to what
might become a cumulative body of research examin-
ing issues of police-citizen interactions.

Findings

from data collected in the late 1970s can provide a
basis for comparisons with future research utilizing
data collected for more current systematic observa-
tional studies of police. It is only after this baseline has

R.s. Engel / Joumal of Criminal Justice 31 (1003) 475-491 477

While researchers continue to struggle to define
and measure citizens’ displays of disrespect, most
would agree that each of these foons of behavior
on their face represents some form of resistance
toward police. Resistance might then be properly
conceptualized as including not only physical aggres-
sion and other overtly hostile acts, but also verbal
aggression (e.g., arguing with or cursing at an offi-
cer), noncompliance or statements that challenge
officers’ authority or legitimacy (e.g., denying an
officer’s accusation. questioning an officer’s judg-
ment, or refusing to respond to an officer’s questions
or requests), and general fonns of disrespect (e.g.,
sarcasm, body language). Each of these actions
represented a challenge (either passive or active) to
an officers’ authority or definition of the situation
(see Bittner, 1974; Van Maanen. 1974, 1978). Just as
each of these forms of resistance might be expected to
have a varying influence over officers’ actions, one
might also expect that factors predicting these actions
would vary. That is, particular types of persons or
situations might be more likely to invoke specific
forms of resistance toward officers.

perspectives rooted in social psychology (Brown &
Levinson, 1987; Tedeschi & Felson, 1994). These
propositions are discussed in further detail below and
summarized in Table I.

Resistance as a symbol of perceptions of injustice

Theoretical framework

Scholars speculated about the relationship be-
tween citizens’ characteristics (e.g., race, sex, age,
intoxication. etc.) and their antagonistic, disrespect-
ful, and hostile behavior toward police. For example,
many suggested that 000- White suspects, particularly
young Black males, were more likely to be disre-
spectful toward police. Indeed, the pen:eived rela-
tionship between demeanor and race was used to
explain higher arrest rates for young African-Amer-
ican males. As Walker (1999) proposed, “to the
extent that officeR stereotype young African-Ameri-
can males as potential suspects, they may provoke
higher rates of antagonistic behavior that. in turn.
results in higher rates of arrest” (pp. 226-227).

Two general explanations are advanced to account
for the perceived relationship between suspects’ char-
acteristics and resistance displayed toward officers.
First, it is possible that particular types of citizens
(e.g., young minority males) may act in disrespectful
or otherwise resistant ways to symbolize their per-
ceptions of injustice. This explanation is rooted in
sociological stratification and psychological theories
that suggest race and socioeconomic status influence
actions by both citizens and officeR (Black, 1976;
Tyler, 1990). Second. it is possible that dynamics
involved during the actual interaction between offi-

cers and citizens lead to displays of resistance. This
explanation focuses on the processes involved in
police-citizen encounteR and relies on interactionist

Applying Black’s (1976) theory of law to explain
citizens’ deviant behavior toward officers, it is hy-
pothesized that increased levels of stratification in
police-citizen encounters would result in more dis-
plays of disrespect by both officers and citizens.
Black theorized that as stratification increased, the
quantity of law increased.’ Although Black’s theory
was primarily directed toward describing the quantity
of law in society, he argued that his theory of law
could also explain other types of social control and
deviance (p. 10). Therefore, one could argue that
Black’s theory of law could be used to explain citizen
disrespect toward officers as a fonn of deviant
behavior. Thus, this theory predicts that as stratifica-
tion increases, other types of social control and
deviance increase. That is, greater levels of stratifi-
cation between police and citizens may lead to more
deviant fonDS of behavior, including citizens’ resis-
tance of authority.

Sykes and Clark (1975) also suggested that nonns
in police-citizen encounters were asymmetrical be-
cause the status of the participants was unequal. They
argued that given this disparate relationship and the
associated nonns and expectations guiding police-
citizen encounters, minority citizens might interpret
officers’ expectations as “indicating the officer’s own
ethnic group’s superordination,” while minority citi-
zens’ refusals to express deference might be inter-
preted by officers as refusals “to acknowledge
normal social obligations of all citizens and the
officer’s symbolic status” (p. 590).

Given this disparate relationship, it is hypothe-
sized that citizens are resistant toward police officers
because they do not recognize officers’ legitimacy
and use disrespect and/or resistance to symbolize
their perceptions of injustice. In his examination of
why citizens obey laws, Tyler (1990) described the
normative processes associated with compliance
(e.g., internalization of nonns regarding values, jus-
tice, and commitment to legal authorities). He argued
that citizens obey laws either because they believe the
laws are legitimate or because they believe legal
authorities are legitimate. Analyzing citizen surveys,
Tyler reported that “both personal morality and
legitimacy were found to have an effect on people’s
everyday behavior toward the law” (p. 161).

Tyler’s (1990) normative theory of citizen compli-
ance can also be utilized to explore citizens’ resistance
toward officers. One could argue that citizens act in

R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 31 (2003) 475-492478

Table

I

Theoretical propositions, applications, and hypotheses

Theoretical propositions Applications and hypothesesTheory

Theory of law (Black, 1980) eThe theory of law can be used to explain other eResistance toward police is a fonD of
fonDS of social control and deviance. deviance that can be explained using

the theory of law.
eIncreased levels of stnltificalion lead to increases eGreater levels of stnltification lead to
in the quantity of law. increases in citizens’ resistance toward

police.
.Increased levels of stratification lead 10 increases

in deviance.

Nonnative theory of citizen

compliance (Tyler. 1990)

.citizens obey the law because they believe laws
and/or legal authorities are legitimate.

.Citizens are more likely to be resistant
when they do not recognize the
legitimacy of officers’ authority.

.Minorities and juveniles are more likely
to question officers’ authority and
therefore more likely to show
resistance.

.Minority and juvenile citizens are less likely to
believe that the laws and/or legal authorities are
legitimate.

Interactive theory of coercive
actions (Tedeschi & Felson,

1994)

eThe need to establish and/or protect social
identities leads to the use of coercive actions.

.lnteractions between police and citizens
often involve challenges to authority
and social identities.

.citizens will engage in coercive actions
toward police to protect their social
identities (particularly in public places).

.citizens will engage in coercive actions
toward police in response to violations
of politeness norms.

.coercive actions are more likely when a
person’s social identity has been challenged
in public.

.Violations of polite norms provoke coercive
responses from persons protecting their
social identities.

disrespectful or resistant ways because they do not
recognize the legitimacy of officers’ authority. Indeed,
the police-citizen crisis of the 1960s was exacerbated
in part because members of minority communities did
not recognize legal authority in American society as
fair or just (WilIiams & Murphy, 1990). For many
minority citizens, police officers became the ultimate
symbol of an unjust society dominated through White
supremacy (Walker, 1999). As a result, the interactions
between police and minority citizens were enveloped
in an atmosphere of distrust and disrespect that has
continued to the present day. Citizens who do not
respect the legitimacy of officers’ authority may be
more likely to question that authority, and as a result
are more likely to demonstrate resistance toward police
officers.

gested that a person’s need to establish or protect their
social identity often leads to the use of coercive
actions. The authors stressed the importance of im-
pression management or “saving face” as a predictor
of coercive actions. The social dynamics associated
with “saving face” are of great concern in situations
where there has been a challenge to authority, such as
in police-citizen encounters. Indeed, as noted by
Tedeschi and Felson, perceptions of disrespect during
police-citizen encounters are a frequent source of
conflict. According to these scholars, a typical re

action

to perceived attacks from others involves some type of
coercive behavior, particularly if their social identity
has been threatened in a public setting.

While it is clear that this framework could be used
to explain officers’ coercive actions toward citizens, it
is initially less apparent how this theory could be
used to explain citizens’ actions toward officers.
Extending Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of
politeness, Tedeschi and Felson (1994) argued that
there were numerous behaviors that could violate
“politeness norms” that protect social identities.
The violation of these politeness norms often pro-
voked a response from persons seeking to protect

their social identities. Tedeschi and Felson described
the concept of “negative face” as representing a
desire to maintain autonomy and control and not be

Dynamics of police-citizen interactions

While sociological explanations of police-citizen
encounters are certainly important, they do not take
into account the actual processes or dynamics involved
during citizen encounters with police. One theoretical
framework that can be utilized to better understand the

dynamics associated with police-citizen conflict is
Tedeschi and Felson’s (1994) social interactionist
theory of coercive actions. Tedeschi and Felson sug-

R.s. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 31 (2003) 475-492 479

interfered with by others. Behavior that threatens a
person’s autonomy (e.g., orders, threats, and wam-
ings) is likely to produce some fonn of resistance.

Applying the concepts of “politeness norms” and
“negative face” to police-citizen encounters, offi-
cers’ attempts to control citizens could be construed
by citizens as attempts to restrict their freedom and
thus may lead to displays of disrespect. This is
especially true in situations where citizens do not
recognize officers’ legitimacy. For example, Tedeschi
and Felson (1994) described situations involving
interactive justice or confonnity to nonns regarding
demeanor, politeness, and respect toward others (p.
219). Tedeschi and Felson suggested that citizens
might act in disrespectful ways because they perceive
officers to be impolite or disrespectful toward them.
Although officers hold the power in these relation-
ships, citizens may act in disrespectful ways, often
with blatant disregard for the consequences. Thus,
citizens might be more likely to challenge officers’
authority if they felt their identities were being
challenged. their freedoms restricted, or politeness
nonns violated-particularly if the encounter took
place in front of others.

Prior research

to exhibit the sort of recalcitrant demeanor which
police construed as a sign of the confinned delin-
quent” (Piliavin & Briar, 1964, p. 212, emphasis
added). In contnl,st, Black and Reiss (1970) reported a
slightly lower percentage of Black juveniles (15.4
percent) who were antagonistic to police compared
toward White juveni1es (17.7 pert:ent) in an observa-
tional study of three police departments in the late
1960s. A replication study utilizing systematic obser-
vation of police-citizen encounters in a midwestem
city. however. showed that the percentage of antag-
onistic encounters between police and Black juve-
niles was double that of White juveniles-30 percent
versus 15 percent. respectively (Lundman et a1.,
1978).2 Research utilizing this same data found that
in 87.9 percent of encounters with White citizens,
complete deference was shown to police compared to
80.9 percent of encounters with non-White citizens
(Sykes & Clark, 1975). Furtbennore, these research-
ers reported that as the citizens’ status declined
(measured as “a function of role and seriousness of
violation as well as of class and ethnicity”), the leve1
of deference shown to officers declined.

These early research findings paint dramatically
different pictures based on widely varying rates of
disrespect shown to police by White and non-White
suspects. Since studies only reported bivariate asso-
ciations, it is unknown whether suspects’ displays of
disrespect are related to other characteristics after
controlling for other relevant factors. In more recent
mu1tivariate analyses, Greenleaf and Lanza-Kaduce
(1995) applied Turk’s (1969) structural conflict the-
ory to examine conflicts between police and citizens
during domestic disputes. They reported that as the
amount of “organization” increased or as the amount
of “sophistication” decreased, the likelihood of norm
resistance by both citizens and officers significantly
increased. Since the variables of interest (i.e., orga-
nization and sophistication) were measured as addi-
tive indices, however, the direct influence of citizen
and situational characteristics was not determined.)

More recently, Lanza-Kaduce and Greenleaf
(2000, p. 222) have extended Turk’s (1969) theory
of norm resistance to incorporate deference reversals
where “suspects refuse to acknowledge the officer’s
position and instead attend to age, race, or gender
norms of deference.” In an examination of police
encounters involving domestic disputes, they de-
scribed sixteen combinations of suspects’ and offi-
cers’ age and race that might structure police-citizen
interactions. These combinations were collapsed into
a three-category deference variable4 and were used to
predict norm resistance. Lanza-Kaduce and GreenJeaf
(pp. 230- 231) found that the deference variable was
a significant predictor of norm resistance and con-
cluded that age and race deference patterns that were

Although the importance of police-citizen rela-
tions is readily apparent, few studies empirically
examined this relationship at its most basic level:
police-citizen encounters where police act as street-
level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980). An abundance of
research examined the effects of disrespect over
police behavior, yet few studies examined the influ-
ence of disrespect and resistance toward police. Much
of the research available only reported bivariate
relationships between demeanor and suspects’ race
(Black & Reiss, 1970; Lundman, Sykes, & Clark,
1978; Piliavin & Briar, 1964; Sykes & Clark, 1975).
The few multivariate studies that were conducted
combined measures of citizen and officer behavior
(Greenleaf & Lanza-Kaduce, 1995; Lanza-Kaduce &
Greenleaf, 2000) or focused on citizen compliance
rather than resistance (Mastrofski, Snipes, & Supina,
1996; McCluskey, Masb’ofski, & Parks, 1999).

Piliavin and Briar’s (1964) classic research
reported that the differences officers perceived be-
tween “serious delinquents” and «good boys” were
based on the juveniles’ demeanor and race. These
scholars concluded that “the tendency for police to
give more severe dispositions to Negroes and to
youths whose appearance corresponded to that which

police associated with delinquents partly reflected the
fact, observed in this study, that these youths also
were much more likely than were other types of boys

.J

R.S. Engel! JOUmQI of Criminal Justice 31 (2003) 475-491480

(1990) theory of citizen compliance, Tedeschi and
Felson’s (1994) theory of violence, and prior resean:h
examining citizens’ behaviors toward police, three
general hypodteses are advanced. First, it is specu-
lated that differences in social stratification between
police and suspects will influence suspects’ reactions
toward officers. possibly due to their varying percep-
tions of officers’ legitimacy. For example, particular
types of suspects (e.g., non-White, juveniles) are
believed to be more likely to question the legitimacy
of officers and therefore more likely to act in a
resistant manner. Second, it is speculated that the

stakes involved in maintaining social identity during
~unters with police will lead suspects to question
officers’ legitimacy and result in displays of resis-
tance. Finally, it is argued that suspects or situations
that involve a propensity for aggressiveness (e.g.,
male suspects, intoxicated suspects, situations involv-
ing conflict between citizens) are more likely to result

in resistance displayed toward officers.

counter to traditional authority relationships resulted
in more resistance. Their measure of the dependent
variable (norm resistance), however, included resis-
tance by both citizens and officers.s Therefore, the
influence of officers’ age and race interactions over
citizens’ behavior is unknown.

Mastrofski et al. (1996) examined the factors
influencing citizen compliance to officers’ requests
through systematic social observation of police offi-
cers collected in Richmond, Virginia. 6 They reported

that officers were more likely to gain compliance
from male citizens and during encounters in public
locations, but less likely to gain compliance from
poor citizens, citizens known to police, and encoun-
ters where additional officers were present. This
study also found that the influence of the citizens’
race on the likelihood of compliance was contingent
upon the officers’ race. Mastrofski et al. reported that
White officers encountering minority citizens were
significantly more likely to gain compliance, while
minority officers encountering White citizens were
significantly less likely. The finding that minority
citizens were more likely to show compliance to
White officers is counter to past research findings
(Lundman et al., 1978; Piliavin & Briar, 1964; Sykes
& Clark, 1975) and the perspectives of many police
officers. Although dated, Piliavin & Briar’s (1964)
observation that “Negro boys were much more likely
than non-Negroes to “give us [officers] a hard time,”
be uncooperative, and show no remorse for their
b’aDsgressions” (pp. 212-213) is an assumption still
widely held today by police officers and researchers.

A recent replication of the research ofMastrofski et
al. (1996) was conducted by McCluskey et al. (1999)
utilizing systematic observational data of officers
collected in Indianapolis, Indiana and St. Petersburg,
Florida. They reported that few of the original findings
held in the subsequent analyses. For example, the only
citizen characteristics that significantly predicted com-
pliance in the replication study were age and an
additive scale measuring “irrational elements,” in-
cluding intoxication, mental illness, and strong emo-
tions (fear, anger, or depression). Both juveniles and
citizens with more irrational elements were signifi-
cantly less likely to comply with officers’ requests.
The original finding of Mastrofski et al. regarding the
significance of officers’ and citizens’ race interactions
was not supported in the replication study.

Perceptions of officers’ legitimacy

It is argued that suspec~ who are non-White or
juvenile will be significantly more likely to question
offi~’ authority and therefore more likely to dis-
play fonns of resistance toward officers. Non-White
suspec~ are thought to be more likely to question
officers’ authority based on their perceptions of
discrimination. Resean:h showed rather consistently
that minorities had more negative attitudes toward the
police and were less likely to perceive police officers
as legitimate sources of authority (Albrecht & Green,

1977; Bayley & Mendelsohn, 1969; Browning,
Cullen, CaD, Kopache, & Stevenson, 1994; Decker,
1981; Dunham & Alpert. 1988; Jacob, 1971; Sca-
glion & Condon, 1980; Taylor et al., 200 I; Tucb &

Weitzer, 1997; Webb & Marshall, 1995; Weitzer,
2000; Weitzer & Tuch, 1999). Therefore, it is
expected that non-White suspec~ are more likely to
display forms of disrespect toward police as com-
pared to White suspects. 7

It is also expected that juvenile suspects are less
likely to accept police legitimacy and authority. Re-
search showed that juveniles had more negative atti-
tudes toward police than adults (Hurst & Frank, 2000;
Jesilow, Meyers & Namazzi, 1995; Taylor et al.,
200 I). In addition, Muir (1977) reported that most
police encounters with juveniles involved an element
of irrationality. He described this paradox of in’atio-
nality as “the more delirious the threatener, the more
serious the threat” to police officers, and defined
juveniles as irrational because they “simply foresaw

their actions’ having consequences different from
those which adults anticipated” (p. 127). Given that
juveniles are less likely to internalize norms regarding

Hypotheses

Given the ambiguity surrounding the findings
reviewed above, it is unclear which factors are likely
to influence suspects’ resistance toward police. Based

on Black’s (1976) theory of social control, Tyler’s

R.S. Engel / JoUnlQI of Criminal JlLflice 31 (200J) 475-492 481

Propensity for aggression

Some displays of resistance and disrespect may be
based on chamcteristics of the suspect or situation
that led to more aggressive forms of behavior. Muir
(1977) described situations that involved critical
incidents where citizens rebelled against officers’
authority. For example, intoxicated citizens were
viewed as less rational and more detached that sober
citizens interacting with police. Likewise, intoxicated
suspects were believed to show more disrespect
toward officers based on numerous studies that iden-
tified a link between alcohol and/or drug consump-
tion and aggressive behaviors (for a review, see
Fagan, 1990).

It is also expected that male suspects are more
resistant toward officers based on a large body of
literature that suggested males are more likely than
females to engage in violence and other displays of
negativity (for a review, see Tedeschi & Felson,
1994) and are more likely to have negative attitudes
toward police (Jesilow et al., 1995). Finally, it is
expected that police-citizen encounters that involve
conflicts between citizens when the police arrive will
result in more displays of resistance. Citizens may be
more likely to respond negatively to officers’ displays
of authority during emotionally charged conflict sit-
uations.

values, justice, and commitment to legal authorities, it
is expected that juvenile suspects will be more likely to
question the legitimacy of officers and therefore more
likely to display fonns of resistance and disrespect.

Despite its intuitive appeal, few studies thorough-
ly exan1ined the potential influence of officers’ char-
acteristics on suspects’ actions. It is speculated that
non-White, female, or younger officers are more
likely to encounter resistant suspects because sus-
pects perceive these officers as less legitimate. Sus-
pects might be more inclined to maintain autonomy
and control when the person attempting to restrict
their freedom is of a pen;eived lower social status.
Likewise, it is argued that interactions between offi-
cers’ race and suspects’ race will significantly influ-
ence the behavior of suspects toward officers.
Specifically, it is speculated that suspects involved
in encounters with police officers of a different race
are more likely to display fonns of resistance.

In addition, police entry-whether the

encounter

was reactive (dispatched or otherwise citizen initiat-
ed) or proactive (initiated by the officer)-is believed
to influence citizens’ reactions toward offICers. Tyl-
er’s (1990) research found that citizens were more
concerned with issues regarding procedural justice
when they were proactively stopped by police com-
pared to when police were summoned to the scene
(see also Tyler & Folger, 1980). Therefore, it is
expected that suspects are more likely to question
officers’ authority in police-initiated encounters and
are therefore more likely to react in a disrespectful
manner. Likewise, it is hypothesized that suspects
who are involved in less serious events leading up to
an encounter with police are more likely to show
resistance to officers. Officers’ use of their authority
and citizens’ perceptions of officers’ legitimacy to
use that authority are less likely to be questioned in
situations involving serious offenses. In situations
involving less serious offenses, however, officers’
legitimacy may be questioned, and as a result sus-
pects may be more likely to respond negatively.1I

Data

Social identities

As previously noted, Tedeschi and Felson’s
( 1994) theory indicated that people were more likely
to engage in coercive actions if their social identity
was challenged, particularly if the challenge occurred
in front of others. Tedeschi and Felson stressed the
importance of the social dynamics associated with
protective self-presentation when there was a chal-
lenge to authority in police-citizen encounters.
Therefore, one might expect that suspects are more
likely to resist officers if the encounter is in a public
location or in the presence of others (bystanders and
other officers).

The purpose of the cunent study was to examine
the above hypotheses using data from a large-scale
multisite field study of police behavior-the PSS
conducted in 1977. Within this data set, suspect
resistance was measured in multiple ways, including
measures of suspects’ actions toward officers that
could be considered resistant (e.g., noncompliance,
verbal aggression, and physical aggression) and
observers’ characterizations of suspects as disrespect-
ful. The PSS included twenty-four police departments
in three metropolitan areas (Rochester, NY; St Louis,
MO; and Tampa/St Petersburg, FL). These depart-
ments ranged in size from thirteen sworn officers to
over 2,000 and served municipalities with popula-
tions that ranged from 6,000 to 499,000. Although
not a random sample, the PSS represented a rough
cross section of police organizations and service
conditions for urban policing in the United States.
Compared with other studies of police, the PSS
provided a considerably broader base from which to
draw generalizations about American policing.

The core methodology of PSS was systematic
social observation of patrol officers in the field, along
with interviews of citizens and officers focused on
sixty neighborhoods that were selected with explicit

R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 31 (2003) 475-492482

reference to the race and income of residents. The
sample of neighborhoods thus represented a rough
cross section of residential service conditions for each
department. On a matched sample of fifteen shifts in
each neighborhood, trained observers accompanied
officers during entire work shifts and unobtrusively
took brief field notes about police-citizen encounters.
Based on these field notes, observers coded data items
about the police-citizen encounters, including the
characteristics and behavior of citizens and officers.

Information on 5,688 police-citizen encounters
during over 900 shifts was coded on a standardized
form (see Caldwell, 1978). Encounters were defined
as any event in which there was face-to-face com-
munication between a police officer and a member of
the public; the communication normally involved
verbal exchanges but could have involved only the
use of force by police. To address the hypotheses
described above, the present work examined a subset
of the PSS observational data: 1,461 nontraffic sus-
pects encountered by police officers. Citizens were
coded as suspects if at the end of the encounter with
police officers, they were considered “suspect in a
criminal matter or peace disturber” or the “person
complained about in a civil matter.”

Table 2
Measures of suspects’ resistance toward police officers
~~6l suspects)
Variables Minimum Maximum Mean S.D.

Suspects’ coded actions:
Noncompliant 0
Verbally resistant 0
Physically resistant 0
Any disrespectful 0

action

0.09
0.10
0.01
0.14

0.28
0.30
0.12
0.35

0.22
Suspects characterized as disrespectful by observers:
At beginning of 0 I 0.05

encounter
During encounter 0 I 0.

08

At end of encounter 0 I 0.05
Any time during 0 I 0.09

encounter

0.27
0.21
0.29

percent of suspects in this sample. Combined, 14.2
percent of citizens displayed one or more of these
types of resistance.

The second general measure of suspects’ resis-
tance was captured as observers’ global assessment of
suspects’ negative demeanor during police-citizen
encounters. Observers were asked to describe sus-
pects’ demeanor toward officers utilizing a list of
“demeanor codes,” including one code that was
defined as “sarcastic, disrespectful, hostile.” The
characterization of demeanor by observers was cap-
tured at three points in time: when officers arrived on
the scene, during the encounter, and when officers
were leaving. Previous analyses exploring the effects
of suspects’ demeanor on officers’ behavior used
disrespect at the beginning of the encounter (when
the officer arrived on the scene) to ensure the proper
temporal ordering of the variables (Worden, 1989;
Worden & Pollitz, 1984). As noted by Worden and
Shepard (1996), this was a conservative approach
whereby some suspects who were disrespectful be-
fore an arrest might be coded as civil. A less
conservative approach would be to measure disre-
spect as those characterized as disrespectful at the
beginning or during the encounter, with the risk of
confounding the effect of suspects’ demeanor on
police behavior. This was a more salient issue for
analyses examining the influence of disrespect on
police behavior. For the present analyses, disrespect
measured at any time during the encounter will be
examined. As shown in Table 2, of the 1,461 suspects
examined, 4.9 percent were characterized as disre-
spectful at the beginning of the encounter, 7.7 percent
during the encounter, and 4.7 percent at the end of the
encounter. Combined, 9.2 percent of suspects were
coded by observers as “sarcastic, disrespectful, or
hostile” at some time during the encounter.

Methods

Measures of resistance

In the PSS data, suspect resistance was measured
in two fundamentally distinct ways: (I) as coded
actions that might be considered resistant and (2) as
observers’ characterizations of disrespect. The for-
mer, coded actions, represented suspects’ behaviors
that might be construed as resistant to officers’
authority. These actions included noncompliance,
verbal aggression, and physical aggression (see Table
2). Observers accompanying officers were prompted
on a systematic coding form to indicate if the citizen
had engaged in these actions during the police-
citizen encounter. Suspects’ actions that were consid-
ered noncompliant included passive resistance to
officers’ authority by “refusing to answer questions”
or “refusing to otherwise cooperate with officers’
requests.” In this sample, 9.2 percent of suspects
showed noncompliance toward officers. A second
coded action, verbal aggression, included more active
forms of noncompliance, including “arguing with or
cursing at an officer.” Verbal aggression was shown
by 9.7 percent of suspects. The final form of coded
actions included physical aggression, such as “phys-
ically fighting with an officer” and “using or
attempting to use a weapon against the officer.”
Physical aggression was only observed from 1.4

R.S. Engel / Joumal of Criminal JIIStic. Jl (100J) 475-492 483

Table 3
CrosstabuIabons of suspect ac1imlS and observa- cbar8Ctcr-
iDtions of d~

Characterized by obscrvcn

aadisrespectful

No Yes

Noncompliant (n-13S) 49.6 (67)
Verbally resistant (n-141) 3S.S (SO)
Physically resistant (n=20) IS.O (3)
Any disrespectful action SO.2 (1

04)

(n=207)

The numbers represent percentages and. in parentheses, the
actualvaJues.

physically resistant manner; these actions alone may
not constitute “disrespect. ”

Clearly, die strength of this argument rests finnly
on one’s definition of disrespect. Van Maanen (1978)
suggested that officers’ classifications of disrespect
were based on their pen:eptions of a citizen’s knowl-
edge of their misbehavior and their ability to act
differently under the circumstances. He described
“die asshole” as someone “who is viewed [by die
police] as culpable and blameworthy for his affront-
ing action” (p. 231, emphasis added). Therefore,
acting in a noncompliant, verbally aggressive, or
physically aggressive manner may not necessarily
result in an offICer’s interpretation of die citizen as

disrespectful.
Unfortunately, it was not clear how PSS observers

defined disrespect. They were prompted to select one
demeanor code to describe the suspect at three
separate points during the encounter and were given
only minimal instructions.9 This demeanor measure
tapped into what might be considered “typical”
interpretations of disrespect and was conditioned by
cultural nonns in American society. Yet, given d1at
officers were in a position of authority, their expect-
ations for citizen behavior might differ somewhat

Table 4
Independent variables (n= 1461 suspects)

Variables Minimum Maximwn MQD S.D.

0.S2 O.SO
0.87 0.

34

0.49 0.50

..

I

0.38 0.49

0.03 0

.17

0.10 0.30

Cross-tabulations comparing the two general
forms of resistance showed significant differences
in the interpretation of what constituted resistance
toward officers (see Table 3). For example, 23.1
percent of suspects characterized as disrespectful by
observers did not display any noncompliance, verbal
aggression. or physical aggression toward officers. It
was likely that observers coded suspects as disre-
spectful based on interpretations of attitudes, body
language, and other forms of nonverbal cues or other
types of disrespectful actions that were not captured
on the standardized coding form.

These measures differed in other significant ways.
As shown in Table 3, not all of the suspects who
displayed particular actions that might be considered
forms of resistance were coded as disrespectful by
observers. For example, nearly half of all suspects
who were noncompliant with officers’ requests, over
35 pen:ent of suspects who verbally argued with or
cursed at an officer, and 15 percent of suspects who
physically resisted an officer were not considered by
observers to be disrespectful. It was clear that as the
suspects’ actions became more severe, observers
were more likely to code them as disrespectful.
Nevertheless, there were significant discrepancies
between the measures.

One interpretation of these discrepancies is that
the observers’ characterizations of suspects’ demean-
or are of questionable validity (see Worden et al.,
1996). A second interpretation, however, is that
coded actions and observers’ global perceptions of
disrespect are simply measuring different phenome-
na. Perhaps some suspects who act in a passive,
noncompliant manner-by refusing to answer ques-
tions or refusing to cooperate with officers’
requests-are not simultaneously being disrespectful.
That is, it may be possible to refuse to cooperate with
officers in a respectful manner. For example, suspects
may respectfully but firmly assert their perceived
rights during encounters with police. The same argu-
ment applies to suspects acting in a verbally or

4
53
4
I

1.98
30.47
0.81
0.41

0.66 0.47
3.56 6.34
0.91 1.46

1
30
10

Protection of social identities
Public location 0
Number of bystanders 0
Number of other 0

officers present

Propensity for aggression
Suspect male 0
Alcohol/drug use 0
Suspect fight with 0

other citizen

f(68)
:(91)
1(17)
; (103)

0.73
0.20
0.88
0.49

0.79 0.41
0.23 0.42
0.02 0.13

484 R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Juftice 31 (2003) 475-492

from observers’ expectations. These differences in
expectations might generate differences in officers’
and observers’ characterizations of citizens as disre-
spectful; however, this proposition could not be tested
with this data set.

None of the measures of suspects’ resistance in
the PSS data were without flaws. Each measure was
based on observers’ interpretations of police-citizen
encounters rather than officers’ interpretations. Nev-
ertheless, these measures-though imperfect-were
representative of the measures used throughout the
literature to explain police decision making. The
strength of these measures was that each captured a
slightly different form and level of resistance toward
police. Therefore, the following analyses explore
each measure of resistance independently in an effort
to better explain suspects’ behavior toward police.

average age of officers encountering suspects was
30.5 years old. A set of dichotomous interaction
terms simultaneously captured the race of the officer
and the suspect. Specifically, four variables were
created that measured the following relationships:
White officer/White suspect, White officer/non-
White suspect, non-White officer/White suspect,
and non-White officer/non-White suspect. A dichot-
omous variable captured whether the encounter was
proactive (initiated by the officer) or reactive (dis-
patched or otheJWise citizen initiated). Following
Klinger (1994), a five-point ordinal scale was used
to measure the seriousness of “preintervention
crime,” where 0 = no crime, I = minor property
crime, 2 = minor violent or major property crime,
3 = moderate violent crime, and 4 = major violent
crime. I I

Table 4 also describes the variables believed to be
associated with social identities and the need to “save
face” during police-citizen encounters. A dichoto-
mous variable captured whether the location of the
encounter was public or private. In addition, the
number of bystanders (those citizens who were pres-
ent but did not participate in the encounter) and the
number of additional officers present were measured
as continuous variables.

Independent variables

Variables hypothesized to relate to perceptions of
officers’ legitimacy are displayed in Table 4. The
majority of suspects were White (52.3 percent) and
adults nineteen years and older (73.5 percent), while
the majority of officers encountering suspects were
White (87.1 percent) and male (98.2 percent).IO The

Table 5
Crosstabulations of ~~ect characteristics and measures of ~~t

Verbally resistant

(n= 141)
Noncompliant
(n= 135)

Physically resistant
(n = 20)

Observer characterize as

disrespectful (n= 134)
Suspect male
Suspect female

9.0 (104)
10.0 (31)

10.3 (118)
7.4 (23)

1.2 (14)
1.9 (6)

8.6 (99)
11.3 (35)

Suspect White
Suspect non-White

6.5 (SO). . .

12.2 (85)
7.6 (58)..

11.9(83)
1.2 (9)
1.6 (II)

7.1(54)..
11.5 (80)

Officer White
Officer non-White

t.’); (117)
~,., (i8)

9.4 (120)
11.1 (21)

1.4 (18)
1.1 (2)

8.7(111)
12.2 (23)

Officer male
Officer female

9.4 (135)
0.0 (0)

9.8 (140)
3.7 (I)

1.4 (20)
0.0 (0)

9.3 (13j)
3.7 {I)

Police initiated
Citizen initiated

7.2 (43)*
10.6 (92)

7.7 (46)-
11.0 (95)

1.3 (8)
1.4 (12)

10.1(87)
7.9 (47)

Public location
Private location

8.7 (84)
10.4 (51)

9.S (92)
10.0 (49)

1.2 (12)
1.6 (8)

9.4(91)
8.8 (43)

Suspect juvenile
Suspect adult

8.5 (33)

9:S(1.~2)

6.5 (25). .
10.8(1.16)

.3{S)

:~ (IS)
7.5 (29)
9.8 (105)

Not intoxicated

AlcohoVdrug use

6.3 (71)…
18.7 (64)

7.0 (78)* * *

18.4 (63)
2.6 (9).
1.0 (II)

6.5 (73)- – –
17.8 (61)

The numbers represent percentages and, in parentheses, the actual values.
. P<.05. .. P< .01.

… P<.OOI.

R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 3 I (2003) 475-492
485

Variables hypothesized to influence resistance
based on their aggressive nature (e.g., suspect sex,
intoxication, and conflict with other citizens) are also
described in Table 4. The majority of suspects were
male (78.7 percent), while nearly one fourth were
under the influence of drugs or alcohol (23.4 percent).
Conflicts during encounters with police were mea-
sured with a dichotomous variable that captured
whether or not the suspect physically fought with
other citizens in the officer’s presence.

Findings

Bivariate

Table 5 reports the bivariate relationships between
selected independent variables and different types of
resistance displayed toward police. Bivariate relation-
ships show that non-White suspects are significantly
more likely to show all types of resistance with the
exception of physical aggression. Contrary to expect-

Perceptions of legitimacy
White suspect – 0.63* *

(0.S3)
0.17
(1.18)

-0.33

(0.72)

-0.08

(0.92)

0.68

(1.97)
-0.17

(0.8S)

White officer

0.67. .
(1.96)
0.22

(1.25)
0.42

(1.51)
-0.09

(0.91)

-0.00

(1.00)
0.17

(1.18)
-0.15

(0.86)

0.36
(1.44)
0.37

(1.45)
0.37

(1.44)
0.21

(1.23)
-0.00

(1.00)
0.01

(1.01)
-0.13

(0.87)

-0.77

(0.46)
-4.89

(0.01)
-0.32

(0.73)
0.20

(1.22)
0.13- –

(1.14)
– 0.27

(0.76)
0.95

(2.59)

White officer!
non-White suspect

Non-White officer!
White suspect

Non-White officer!
non-White suspect

Age of suspect -0.09

(0.91)
-0.00

(1.00)
0.17

(1.18)
-0.16

(0.85)

0.21
(1.23)

-0.00

(1.00)
0.01

(1.01)
-0.14

(0.87)

0.23
(1.25)0.13. .
(1.13)

-0.27
(0.76)
0.95
(2.58)

Age of officer

Seriousness

Police initiate

Protection of social identity
Public location

-0.24

(0.79)
0.01

(1.01)
0;30.. .
(1.34)

-0.24

(0.79)
0.01

(1.01)
0.30.. .
(1.34)

-0.

(0.
O.

(I.’
O.

(I.

-0.08

(0.93)
0.04

(1.04)
0.30** *

(1.35)

-0.59

(0.56)0.10.. .
(1.11)
0.55.. .
(1.73)

–

0.63

(0.53)
0.10-. .

(1.11)
O.SS.. .
(1.73)

Number of bystanders

Number of officers

Prone to aggression
Male suspect

-0.22

(0.80)

1.17…

(3.21)

~O.76
(2.13)

118.8…
.17

-0.22

(0.80)

1.17…

(3.22)
0.77

(2.16)
119.2.. .

.17

0.34
(1.41)
0.93.. .

(2.54)
0.56

(J.74)
JI8.9*. .

.17

0.34
(1.40)
0.94** *

(2.55)
0.56

(1.76)
119.3** *

.17

–

0.84

(0.43)
1.27.

(3.56)
1.31

(3.70)
88.9.. .

.44

-0.85

(0.43)
1.26.

(3.51)
I.2S

(3.49)89.S.. .
.44

AlcohoVdrug use

Suspect fight with
citizen

Model chi-square
Nagelkerke K

Entries are unstandardized coefficients and, in parentJIeses, log odds.
* P<.OS.

08

93)
04

04)
30…
35)

.. P<.OI.

… P<.OOI.

R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 3 J (2003) 475-492486

ations, juveniles are not more likely than adult
suspects to be resistant toward police-in fact, adults
are significantly more likely to engage in verbal
aggression. Somewhat surprisingly, male suspects
are not significantly more likely than female suspects
to display any type of resistance. Consistent with the
hypotheses, suspects under the influence of drug or
alcohol are significantly more likely to engage in all
fortnS of resistance.

Table 7
Logistic regression of observers’ characterizations of
suspects’ disrespect (11= 1,461)
Variable Disrespect-

Constant

Multivariate

0.4S.
(I.S6)

0.44

(1.56)

0.84

(2.31)

1,14

(3.14)

0.60

(1.82)

0.63

(1.88)

-0.07

(0.93)
0.00

(1.00)
-0.13

(0.87)
-0.03

(0.96)

-0.

(0.
-0.

(0.
-0,

(0.
-0,

(1.

Protection of social identity
Public location

0.06

(1.06)
Number of 0.03 –

bystanders (1.03)
Number of 0.32– –

officers

(1.38)

0.06

(1.06)
0.03.

(1.03)
0.33…

(1.38)

0.31
(1.36)

-0.01
(0.99)
0.27.. .
(1.31)

Prone to aggression
Male suspect – 0.47.

(0.63)1.10.. .
(2.99)1.37. .
(3.95)

– 0.48.
(0.62)
1.10*..

(3.02)
1.38. .

(4.01)

-0

(0
0

(2
I

(5

To further examine these relationships, several
logistic regression equations exploring the predictors
of different fonns of suspects’ resistance are dis-
played in Tables 5 and 6.12 In Table 6, the regression
coefficients, log odds, and significance levels of
characteristics that predict coded actions of resistance
are reported. For each dependent variable, two mod-
els are estimated: (1) the base model and (2) the base
model with officer/race interaction tenns included.

Contrary to expectations, the majority of in de pen-
dent variables did not have a significant influence
across all fonDS of resistance. The results displayed in
Table 6 suggest that the only consistent predictors of
all suspects’ resistant actions toward police (i.e.,
noncompliance, verbal resistance, and physical resis-
tance) are suspects’ use of alcohol or drugs and the
number of officers present. Specifically, the odds of
noncompliance, verbal resistance, and physical resis-
tance toward police are 3.2, 2.5, and 3.6 times more
likely when the suspect is under the influence of
drugs or alcohol, respectively. The significant find-
ings for the number of officers present must be
interpreted carefully because additional officers may
have been called to the scene to provide assistance
after suspects initially resisted police. That is, tem-
poral ordering with this variable cannot be measured,
and therefore the predictive validity of the presence
of officers over suspect resistance is unknown.

Slightly different patterns emerge that explain
suspects’ resistance when different types of actions
are examined-the most important of these differ-
ences is that non-White suspects are significantly
more likely to show resistance through noncompli-
ance, but not through verbal or physical aggression.
When the suspect/officer race interaction tenDS are
entered into the equations, it becomes clear that only
non-White suspects encountered by White officers
are significantly more likely to be noncompliant. The
race interactions terms, along with the main race
effects, are nonsignificant for more active forms of
resistance (e.g., verbal and physical resistance).

Slightly different patterns emerge when the char-
acterization of suspects as disrespectful is examined.
Table 7 displays the regression coefficients, log odds,

AlcohoVdrog
use

Suspect fight
wi citizen

Suspect actions
Noncompliant 1.64** *

(5.14)
3.42** *

(30.69)
2.39* *

(10.92)
412.S*. .

0.54

Verbal resistance

Physical
resistance

Model chi-square
Nagelkerke K

113.2***
0.16

114.4.. .
0.16

Entries are unstandardized coefficients and, in parentheses,
log odds.

* P< .05... P<.OI.... P<.OOI.

34

71)
01

99)
25

78)
04

04)

.99

.37
‘.78
.17
.69
.39

..
)…
)
.

)

R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice J 1 (100J) 475-491 487

and significance levels for variables predicting
observers’ characterizations of suspects as disrespect-
ful. The results include three different models: (I) the
base model, (2) the base model with officer/race
interaction tenns included, and (3) the base model
with race interaction terms and citizens’ actions
included. The third model (including citizens’
actions) attempts to examine observers’ character-
izations of disrespect controlling for the actions of
the suspect. As with suspects’ resistant behaviors,
intoxication and the presence of additional officers
significantly influences disrespect. Unlike the previ-
ous models, female suspects and suspects who are in
conflict with other citizens are significantly more
likely to be characterized as disrespectful by observ-
ers. Even after controlling for suspects’ actions,
suspects who are female, under the influence of
alcohol or drugs, or involved in a physical fight with
other citizens are significantly more likely to be
characterized as disrespectful toward officers. As
with verbal and physical aggression, the suspect/
officer race interaction terms are not significant
predictors of suspects’ disrespect as characterized
by the observer.

To control for the possibility that citizens were
reacting to officers’ punishment/control through dis-
plays of resistance, the actions taken by officers
toward citizens (including arrest, use of force, and
displays of disrespect) were captured as dichotomous
variables and included in separate models estimating
suspects’ resistance and disrespect. If citizens’ resis-
tance was determined by officers’ actions, then one
would expect that the coefficients for the other
variables in the model would have been substantially
reduced. The inclusion of these variables, however,
did not alter the main findings reported. Although the
models including officer behavior explained more
variance, the coefficients for the other independent
variables remained relatively stable. These results are
not displayed in tabular form but are available from
the author upon request.

Discussion

variables related to the protection of social identities
(e.g., the presence of bystanders, location of the
encounter, etc.) and measures of suspects’ propensity
for aggression (e.g., gender, intoxication) could also
predict suspect behavior. As reported above, howev-
er, with the exception of suspects’ propensity for
aggression, most of these relationships withstood

empirical scrutiny.
The proxy measures of citizens’ perceptions of

officers’ legitimacy have a mixed influence over
suspects’ displays of resistance toward officers. Of
particular importance is the fmding that non-White
suspects are significantly more likely to display
noncompliance (i.e., passively resisting officers’ au-
thority by refusing to answer questions or otherwise
cooperate) but not other more aggressive forms of
resistance toward officers’ authority. More refmed
analyses of the officer/suspect race relationship show
that the odds of a non-White suspect acting in a
noncompliant manner toward White officers are 2.0
times greater compared to White suspects. Perhaps
non-White suspects are more likely to passively
challenge White officers’ authority simply by assert-
ing their constitutional rights in situations that Tede-
schi and Felson (1994) have described as involving
interactive justice. For example, non-White suspects
might be more likely to passively resist White offi-
cers’ authority by refusing to answer questions or
refusing to otherwise cooperate with officers’
requests because they perceive (correctly or incor-
rectly) that police are unfairly targeting them and that
they have the right not to respond. Yet, when more
serious forms of resistance are examined-verbal
aggression. physical aggression, and characterizations
of disrespect-it is clear that non-White suspects are
not significantly more likely to engage in such
activities compared to White suspects. Other varia-
bles thought to reflect perceptions of officers’ legit-
imacy did not have a significant influence over
suspects’ resistance toward officers. Contrary to
expectations, juvenile suspects are not more likely
to resist officers’ authority. Likewise, the seriousness
of the offense and police initiation of the encounter
are not significant predictors of resistance.

The fmding that non-White suspects were signif-
icantly more likely to be noncompliant toward offi-
cers contradicted findings reported by Mastrofski et
al. (1996). Specifically, Mastrofski et al. ~ that
non-White suspects were significantly more likely to
comply with requests issued by White officers. There
are several plausible explanations for the discrepancy
in findings. First, the measure of compliance used in
the study of Mastrofski et al. differed significantly
from the measure of noncompliance in the CUn’ent
study. 1:1 Second, Mastrofski et al. examined the

compliance of all citizens (e.g., victims, wiblesses,

Applying Black’s (1976) dteory of social control,
Tyler’s (1990) theory of citizen compliance, and
Tedeschi and Felson’s (1994) theory of coercive
actions, it was hypodtesized that particular types of
suspects, situations, and officers would lead to greater
displays of resistance during police-citizen encoun-
ters. Specifically, it was hypothesized that proxy
measures of citizen’s pe~eptions of legitimacy (i.e.,
SUSpect and officer race, age, etc.) could predict
resistance and disrespect displayed by suspects to-
ward police. Likewise, it was hypothesized that

488 R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 31 (2003) 475-492

and suspects) whom the police instructed in some
way, while the current study examined noncompli-
ance of only those considered suspects. Thus, both
the sample and the phenomena that these studies
sought to explain were different. A final explanation
for the discrepancy in the findings may be that
citizens’ responses to police have changed signifi-
cantly over time. The Richmond data set utilized by
Masb”ofski et al. was collected in 1990, while PSS
data were gathered in 1977. Note, however, that a
replication effort with data collected from 1996 to
1997 in two additional cities also did not reproduce
the core finding ofMasb”ofski et al (McCluskey et al.,
1999). Perhaps, Richmond’s commitment to problem
solving and community policing policies represented
a unique and more innovative form of policing, or
police-minority relations in Richmond were better
than those in other American cities. 14

The current findings also show that variables
measuring the protection of social identities do not
have consistent influences over most forms of resis-
tance. There is limited support for the proposition that
suspects are more resistant when the number of
bystanders increases; however, this relationship only
applies to displays of physical aggression. The nature
of the location (public or private) does not influence
displays of resistance by suspects. Finally, the pres-
ence of other officers was consistently and signifi-
cantly related to all forms of resistance displayed by
suspects; but due to the issues of temporal ordering
previously noted, the predictive validity of this var-
iable was unknown.

Measures of suspects’ propensity for aggression
(i.e., suspects’ gender and intoxication) both have a
significant influence over resistance toward police.
The strongest and most consistent predictor of
suspects’ resistance is the use of drugs and/or
alcohol. As hypothesized, suspects’ use of drugs
or alcohol increases the likelihood of all forms of
resistance-noncompliance, verbal aggression, phys-
ical aggression, and disrespect. This is consistent
with Muir’s (1977) observation that intoxicated
citizens were more likely to be irrational and
detached during their interactions with police. In-
toxicated suspects were less aware of the conse-
quences of their actions and were more likely to
rebel against officers’ authority.

Contrary to expectations, males were not more
likely to be disrespectful toward police. Compared to
male suspects, the odds of being disrespectful for
female suspects were increased by a factor of 1.6
(odds ratio=O.63 for male suspects). Although fe-
male suspects were significantly more likely than
male suspects to be classified as disrespectful by
independent observers, they were not more likely to
engage in resistant actions (i.e., noncompliance, ver-

bat aggression, or physical aggression) during their
encounters with police. It is possible that female
suspects were more likely to engage in less-threaten-
ing forms of disrespect (e.g., complaining, sarcasm.
nonverbal cues of disrespect including body lan-
guage) that were captured in observers’ character-
izations of disrespect, but not captured in coded
actions of resistance. This finding is supported by a
larger body of research that suggests women are less
likely to comply with officers’ requests (Mastrofski et
al., 1996), more likely to complain (Kowalski, 1996),
and more likely to show anger and other emotions in
conflict situations (Brody, 1999) compared to men.

Alternatively, one could argue that observers’
characterizations of disrespect have less validity
than measures of resistance. Researchers speculated
that women who acted in a nonstereotypically
feminine manner were more likely to be sanctioned
by police. That is, women who do not fit the
stereotypical female role in one way or another
(e.g., by being part of a minority group, engaging
in prostitution, or acting in a hostile or aggressive
fashion) are more likely to be arrested (Chesney-
Lind, 1978). Perllaps trained observers-who are
typically middle-class college students-are more
likely to interpret nontraditional behavior from
female suspects as disrespectful compared to simi-
lar behavior from male suspects. To disentangle
these relationships. additional studies examining
differences between coded actions and observers’
characterizations of disrespect are needed.

Collectively. the current fmdings suggest that the
factors that influence displays of resistance and
disrespect toward police differ based on the type of
actions being considered. This supports Klinger’s
(1994, 1996a) suggestion that researchers need to
be more careful in their measures and conceptualiza-
tion of demeanor. Future research should consider
how to better measure suspect disrespect from patrol
officers’ rather than observers’ perspectives. What is
considered “disrespectful” behavior by an observer
might be a typical-even expected-response to an
experienced police officer. Future research should
also explore these conceptualization and measure-
ment issues through the use of debriefing techniques
and protocol analysis (Mastrofski & Parks, 1990;
Worden & Brandl, 1990).

These fmdings have other important implications
for future research. It is clear that establishing tem-
poral ordering for research-examining police-citizen
encounters is critical. Tedeschi and Felson (1994)
stressed the importance of the processes of interac-
tions. Likewise, Sykes and Clark (1975) cautioned
against intetpretations of police and citizen behavior
that only consider the personal traits of the individ-
uals rather than focusing on the interaction between

R.S. Engel/Journal of Criminal Justice 3 J (1003) 475-491 489

ings in Atlanta. November 8-10, 2001. Special
thanks to Richard Felson, Eric Silver, Robert Worden.
and Stephen Mastrofski for their helpful comments
on an eartier draft of this article.

Notes

citizens and police. Unfortunately, the PSS data set
does not establish time ordering of police-citizen
interactions. Therefore, it is possible that suspects
were acting in noncompliant, resistant, or disrespect-
ful ways in response to officers’ actions. Future
research should examine the interaction between
officers and citizens as it unfolds in time-this
approach is the next step for the study of suspect
and police demeanor. This may require the use of
qualitative data to aid in the interpretation of coded
information gathered during systematic obsclVation
of police officers (Mastrofski & Parks, 1990).

Analyses of more current data that examine the
relationship of suspects’ perceptions of officers’ le-
gitimacy and suspects’ displays of resistance toward
police are needed. Due to the dated nature of the data
utilized in this research, generalizability of the find-
ings to current police-citizen relationships is ques-
tionable. These analyses, however, have created
baseline comparisons for future analyses using more
current data. Furthennore, these analyses suggest that
there are differences in the predictors of different
fonDS of resistance and disrespect that researchers
should further examine.

Of particular interest is whether variables mea-
suring sb’atification and propensity for aggression
continue to predict suspects’ actions toward police.
In the past decade. concern regarding the relation-
ship between minority citizens and police has
increased. Community perceptions of officers en-
gaging in racial profiling during b’affic and inter-
rogation stops, coupled with several high profile
uses of excessive force (e.g., Rodney King, Abner
Louima, Arnadou Diallo, Timothy Thomas), have
led to increased tension between minority citizens
and police and race riots. Findings from data
collected in the late 1970s suggested that minority
suspects showed passive fonDS of noncompliance
toward officers but did not engage in more active
fonDS of resistance including verbal and physical
aggression. Applying Tyler’s theory of citizen com-
pliance, it was speculated that minority suspects
who showed resistance toward officers did so, in
part, because they questioned officers’ legitimacy
and authority. As minority citizens’ discontent with
police practices continues to grow, will more active
fonDS of citizens’ resistance and disrespect toward
police be the result? Additional empirical research
based on contemporary studies of policing is need-
ed to further explore these relationships.

I. Black defined stratifICation as “any uneven dis1ri-
bution of the material conditions of existence” (p. II).

2. Note, however, that only twenty encounters were
observed with Black juveniles, six of which were considered

antagonistic.
3. Social organization was measured as additive

index including multiple arrests during a single encounter,
the nature of the relationship between suspects and
victims, and number of bystanders present. Sophistication
was measured as an additive index including officers’
experience, suspects’ level of intoxication, if the dispute
between citizens was in progress when police arrived. if
the encounter was visible to others, amount of evidence,
use of a weapon, and injury to the victim (Greenleaf &

Lanza-Kaduce, 1995).
4. The deference variable included the following three

categories: “( I) cases in which reversals predominated, (2)
cases in which neither reversals nor reinforceR predomi-
nated, and (3) cases in which reinforcers predominated”
(Lanza-Kaducc & Greenleaf, 2000, p. 227).

5. The measUTe of norm resistance included “verbal
attacks on officers, physical assaults on officers, refusal by
citizens to obey a lawful order, resisting arrest or interfering
with officers, and the use of force by police” (Lanza-Kaduce
&. Greenleaf, 2000, p. 227).

6. Citizen compliance was measured as citizens who
complied or indicated a willingness to comply in the future
to three types of officers’ requests: (I) to discontinue illegal
behavior, (2) to leave another person alone or leave the
premises, or (3) to calm down or cease disorderly behavior
(Mastrofski et aI., 1996).

7. Note however, that citizens’ actual perceptions of
police will not be measured in the analyses to follow.
Rather, suspects’ characteristics are utilized as proxy
measures.

8. Two alternative arguments could be made. First, it
could be argued that suspects in more serious encounters
with police are more likely to be deferential, even extremely
deferential, because they recognize the gravity of the
situation and the strong possibility of police coen:ive action.
Second. some ethnographic resean:h reported that officers
deflDed citizens as disrespectful based on the immediate
interaction between them rather than on the facts that
initially led to the police-citizen encounter. As explaincd by
Van Maanen (1978), “the police view of the asshole as
deviant is a product of the immediate transaction between
the two and nol a product of an act preceding the
transaction” (p. 228; emphasis added).

9. The list of possible demeanor codes included: (I)

businesslike, (2) friendly, (3) apologetic, (4) pleading, tlying
to enlist officer’s aid, sympathy, (5) frightened, aftaid of
officers, (6) cool, detached. could not care less, (7) sarcastic,
disrespectful, hostile. (8) other, (9) do not know, not

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this article was presented at
the American Society of Criminology annual meet-

490 R.s. Engel! Journal of Criminal J/Lftice 3/ (2003) 475-492

ascertained, (10) unconscious, (II) citizen not present or
uninvolved. Observers were given the following instruc-
tions:

Note that these items specify demeanor toward the
officer. When in doubt code as other (08). As with the
emotional state codes, we are trying to capture clearly
recognizable demeanors in these items. Somewhat
submissive behavior on the part of the citizen partic-
ipants can be coded as businesslike (0 I ) and this may be
a part of nomIaI police-citizen roles. (Police Services

Study, coding manual).
10. Of the 1.8 percent of suspects encountered by

female officers, only one was coded as disrespectful. Due to
this limited sample size, the sex of the officer was excluded
from the multivariate analyses that follow.

II. For each encounter, the observer recorded at least
one and up to three codes, selected from a list of 247
problem codes, to characterize the nature of the problem at
each of three tirnes: (I ) as it was initially presented to police
(usually by a dispatcher), (2) upon the officer’s arrival at the
scene, and (3) at the end of the encounter. The seriousness
scale was based on the most complete and accurate
information available to the observer at the conclusion of
the encounter.

12. The independent variables were measured at
different levels of analysis: officer and suspect. Although
some officers did encounter multiple suspects, only 17
percent of the officers were involved in five or more
encounters, the minimum number necessary for the use of
hierarchical linear modeling (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992).
Therefore, nonhierarchical logistic regression was the
appropriate technique to use for these analyses.

13. Mastrofski et al. measured citizen compliance as
citizens who complied or indicated a willingness to comply
in the future to three types of officers’ ~ts: (I)
discontinue illegal behavior, (2) leave another person
alone/leave the premises, or (3) calm down/cease disorderly
behavior. In contrast. the current measure of nonco”1’liance
was a more general measure that included “refusing to
answer questions” and “refusing to otherwise cooperate
with officers’ requests.”

14. The data collected from Mastrofski’s study also
revealed other rather unique findings that suggested
Richmond was different than other police departments. For
example, Mastrofski et al. (1995) were the only researchers
who reported a statistically significant relationship between
offICers’ ani tudes and behavior. In addition, this study was
one of only two that found suspects’ demeanor did not
influence officers’ behavior (see also Klinger. 1994).

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