How Supervisors Can Make a Difference. A Comprehensive Test of the “Fair Policing from the Inside Out” Approach.

• In Event: Police Legitimacy and Procedural Justice (2): New Perspectives on Police-Citizen Relations

Abstract

The “fair policing from the inside out” approach is a recent theoretical contribution that aims at advancing scientific knowledge on fairness and unfairness in policing. This approach emphasizes that perceptions of internal procedural justice (fair supervision) stimulates police officers to practice external procedural justice (fair policing). The framework identifies four mechanisms that explain this link: supervisor modeling, indirect influence through negative emotions (such as frustration and anger), indirect influence through officers’ job satisfaction and morale, and indirect influence through officers’ trust in citizens. Recently, the first steps have been taken to test some of these mechanisms (VanCraen & Skogan, 2016). In the study we report here, for the first time all four mechanisms are tested simultaneously. The testing is done using a structural equation model fitted to data gathered among police officers of the Ghent police department. The results confirm three of the four explanatory mechanisms. The study does not yield empirical support for the role of negative emotions. Yet, the findings indicate that frustration and anger can generate a link between internal and external procedural justice in a way that has not been theorized in the initial version of the “fair policing from the inside out” approach.

Author

• Maarten Van Craen, KU Leuven