Determinants of encounter-specific police procedural justice perceptions among Dutch detainees

• In Event: Police-citizen encounters and perceptions: procedural justice, crime reporting, contested encounters and bystanders

Abstract

Previous police procedural justice research shows that objective assessments of the actual procedural justice portrayed by the police and citizen perceptions of police procedural justice are not strongly associated. In fact, little is known about how people form their perceptions regarding police behaviour and how personal and situational characteristics influence police procedural justice perceptions, especially for people who most frequently interact with the police and criminal justice system, such as offenders or arrestees. The present research examines the effect of both individual and situational characteristics on perceptions of encounter-specific police procedural justice among detainees, using data from the Prison Project conducted in the Netherlands. Male adults in pretrial detention (N = 1,380) were surveyed on how they perceived police procedural justice during their arrest, approximately three weeks prior. In addition to individual characteristics (demographics, attitudes, psychosocial characteristics and criminal history), we measured characteristics that reflect the situation during arrest, such as location, audience, offense type, and police verbal and physical aggressiveness. This allowed us to examine the effect of situational factors on arrestee perceptions, net of individual characteristics. Regression analyses show that next to pre-existing attitudes towards the police, several situational characteristics (e.g., location, police aggressiveness, citizen anger) strongly predicted encounter-specific procedural justice perceptions. Our results indicate that, beyond (pre-existing) individual characteristics, factors specific to the situation - in this case the arrest - play an important role in forming procedural justice perceptions of the police.

Authors

• Emmeke Kooistra, NSCR

• Amy Nivette, Utrecht University

• Anja Dirkzwager, NSCR