The Effects of Procedural Justice on Perceptions of Police Bias: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments

• In Event: Cultivating Satisfaction, Trust and Confidence in Police

Abstract

Most criminological research on the influence of procedural and distributive justice is based on the analysis of cross-sectional survey data. This large and growing body of research is often concerned with contrasting the effects of these two justice judgments on outcomes like cooperation and compliance with law and legal authorities. Because measures of these two concepts are typically included as exogenous variables in multivariate regression models, their relationship with one another has not often been explored. Yet there are good reasons to expect that perceptions of fair procedures (procedural justice) may influence perceptions of fair outcomes (distributive justice). Examining this relationship using cross-sectional survey data is not ideal for a number of reasons. Here we draw on two randomized experiments to estimate the effects of a procedural justice treatment on perceptions of distributive justice. We focus on three distributive justice judgments: perceptions of age, sex, and race bias in the decision to issue a citation during a police traffic stop. The results confirm that procedural justice has powerful effects on distributive justice assessments. When police behave in a procedurally unjust manner, the public perceives their discretionary decisions to be more biased.

Authors

• Edward R. Maguire, Arizona State University

• Belen V. Lowrey, American University

• Devon Johnson, George Mason University