Monopolizing force?: police legitimacy and public attitudes towards the acceptability of violence

Why do people believe that violence is acceptable? In this paper we study people’s normative beliefs about the acceptability of violence to achieve social control (as a substitute for the police, for self-protection and the resolution of disputes) and social change (through violent protests and acts to achieve political goals). Addressing attitudes towards violence among young men from various ethnic minority communities in London, we find that procedural justice is strongly correlated with police legitimacy, and that positive judgments about police legitimacy are associated with more negative views about the use of violence. We conclude with the idea that police legitimacy has an additional, hitherto unrecognized, empirical property – by constituting the belief that the police monopolise rightful force in society, legitimacy has a ‘crowding out’ effect on positive views of private violence

Enabling and constraining police power: on the moral regulation of policing

In this paper we consider some of the ethical challenges inherent in the regulation of discretionary police power. Discretion is central to police policy and practice, but it also provides a level of freedom that opens up the space for injustice and inequity, and this is seen most vividly in recent debates about unfairness and racial profiling in the distribution and experience of police stops in the US and UK. How to regulate discretionary power is a challenging question, and this is especially so in the context of practices like stop-and-search/stop-and-frisk. The ability to stop people in the street and question them is central to policing as it is understood in many liberal democracies, but under conditions of unfairness and questionable efficacy – when the application of this particular police power appears unethical as well as ineffective – one can reasonably ask whether the power should be dropped or curtailed, and if curtailed, how this would work in practice

Legitimacy and procedural justice in prisons

All social situations are ‘ordered’ in some way, comprising a constantly changing set of relationships that establish the structure within which human action occurs. In many circumstances this order is hidden, even ephemeral; we are barely aware of its presence. But this is not the case in prisons. Social order in prison is in many ways highly visible: it is established and managed by the omnipresent rules that govern prison life. In large part these rules are oriented toward reproducing the extant regime. They lay down apparently strict criteria for what constitutes order and what is to be done if it is breached. But what is meant by order in prison? Most socia

When lockdown law is effectively unenforceable, what motivates people to obey it?

Do people obey lockdown rules because the law demands it, or out of a sense of collective duty? Jonathan Jackson (LSE) and Ben Bradford (UCL) argue that law has offered a powerful way for people to understand their social obligations during the pandemic

Rethinking the policing of homelessness: navigating the urban ‘game’ as social peacekeepers

This paper considers interactions between police and individuals experiencing homelessness, a fundamental aspect of contemporary urban dynamics. The challenges and vulnerabilities faced by the ‘street population’ intersect with policing priorities in ways that prompt reevaluation of conventional policing methods. Beginning with an exploration of existing research, Section 1 analyses police interactions with the street population, illuminating the complexities, challenges, and outcomes of these encounters. Section 2 takes an ethics-based approach to scrutinise the implicit assumptions and values underpinning traditional policing. By dissecting the moral implications of these encounters, the paper underscores the necessity for an alternative framework grounded in compassion, empathy, and social welfare. Section 3 considers the potential for a paradigm shift in policing methods concerning the street population towards community-based strategies, restorative justice practices, and collaborative partnerships between police and social service providers. By combining research findings, ethical considerations, and potential strategies, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of these interactions, ultimately seeking to enhance the well-being of people experiencing homelessness and promote community harmony. By challenging existing paradigms and advocating for a more empathetic and socially conscious approach, the paper strives to ignite meaningful transformations that address the complex dynamics between police and the street population

Trust and legitimacy across Europe: a FIDUCIA report on comparative public attitudes towards legal authority

FIDUCIA (New European Crimes and Trust-based Policy) seeks to shed light on a number of distinctively ‘new European’ criminal behaviours which have emerged in the last decade as a consequence of both technology developments and the increased mobility of populations across Europe. A key objective of FIDUCIA is to propose and proof a ‘trust-based’ policy model in relation to emerging forms of criminality – to explore the idea that public trust and institutional legitimacy are important for the social regulation of the trafficking of human beings, the trafficking of goods, the criminalisation of migration and ethnic minorities, and cybercrimes. In this paper we detail levels of trust and legitimacy in the 26 countries, drawing on data from Round 5 of the European Social Survey. We also conduct a sensitivity analysis that investigates the effect of a lack of measurement equivalence on national estimates