Cooperation with Police and Compliance with Laws in Ghana: A Test of Two Models of Policing

• In Event: Peripheral Systems and Police Legitimacy

Abstract

Procedural justice theory posits that police officers who treat people with respect and dignity, and are fair and neutral in decision-making, will enhance their legitimacy, which will in turn motivate people to cooperate with police and comply with laws voluntarily. However, concerns about the appropriate measurement of police legitimacy have limited tests of its mediational hypothesis in policing research. The current study adopts a new measure of legitimacy to test the mediational hypothesis of procedural justice theory in a sample of 843 Ghanaian university students. We further assess the utility of the police procedural justice model by comparing it to police effectiveness, a model rooted in deterrence theory. Path analysis reveals that police procedural justice has a direct association with police legitimacy and cooperation with police, but the effects on cooperation do not flow through police legitimacy. Comparing police procedural justice to police effectiveness shows that procedural justice remains a weak predictor of cooperation with police in Ghana. Police procedural justice and effectiveness had no association with compliance with laws, either directly or indirectly through police legitimacy. We discuss the policy and theoretical implications of our results.

Authors

• Dennis Sarpong, Arizona State University

• Vincent de Paul Kanwetuu, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology