Calling the Campus Police: Extending the Procedural Justice Model to Campus Authorities

• In Event: Campus Policing and Perceptions of Police By University Students

Abstract

While prior studies examined students’ perceptions of campus police legitimacy (Jacobsen, 2015; Wada, Patten, & Candela, 2010), this study extends the procedural justice model to the institution of the campus police. Relying on a survey of undergraduate respondents (n = 554), I first test for the influence of general procedural justice ratings on perceptions of campus police legitimacy, controlling for impressions of effectiveness as well as distributive fairness. Following the analysis of the antecedents of campus police legitimacy, I test the predictive power of legitimacy evaluations on a specific form of cooperation with campus police. This project focuses on the phenomenon of third-party campus crime reporting, specifically students’ self-reported likelihood of reporting witnessed crime incidents to the college public safety department.

Author

• Michael Francis Aiello, State University of New York at Fredonia