Testing procedural justice theory in Belgium and Sweden

Procedural justice theory assumes that trust in procedural justice and in the effectiveness of the police are important issues for building the legitimacy of the aforementioned institution. Additionally, the perception of police legitimacy, as a result of public trust, is necessary for the recognition of police authority. When citizens recognize the right of the police to determine authority, they are assumed to feel the obligation to obey the police and ultimately comply with the law and cooperate with the police. This theoretical framework is mainly tested in Anglo-Saxon countries. Hence, the purpose of this contribution is to test the key assumptions of procedural justice theory in the Belgian and Swedish context using data of the European Social Survey (ESS). Attention is paid not only to the role of procedural justice, but also to the role of deterrence and the role of personal morality to explain the willingness to cooperate with the police and compliance with the law. This allows us to compare the impact of procedural justice with the impact of other possible determinants. We used Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to do the analyses. The results suggest that the reason why people cooperate with the police is different in both countries

Explaining support for vigilantism and punitiveness: assessing the role of perceived procedural fairness, ethnocentrism, authoritarianism and anomia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interrelationships among ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, anomia, the lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, punitiveness and support for vigilantism in a cross-sectional sample of 1,078 Belgian university students enrolled at Ghent University during the academic year 2009-2010. The emphasis lies on confidence in procedural justice or perceived procedural fairness, a specific type of organisational justice perception that reflects how fairly organisational procedures of the criminal justice system are perceived. First, it is assessed to what extent ethnocentrism, authoritarianism and anomia can equally explain individual differences in perceived procedural fairness of the criminal justice system, punitiveness and support for vigilantism. Ethnocentrism, anomia and authoritarianism are from a theoretical point of view hypothesised as exogenous variables that especially (but not exclusively) have indirect effects on public support for vigilantism mainly because of their effects on perceived procedural fairness in the criminal justice system and punitiveness. Finally, it is investigated to what extent punitiveness can be seen as the key mediator of the effects of all exogenous mechanisms (ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, anomia) and perceptions of procedural fairness as an endogenous mechanism on public support for vigilantism. Direct and indirect effects between latent variables are assessed using a structural equation modelling approach (full LISREL models)

Vertrouwen winnen of gezag afdwingen?

Is er iets met het gezag van de politie aan de hand?’ Om deze vraag te beantwoorden, wordt vertrokken vanuit de begrippen vertrouwen en legitimiteit. Het publiek vertrouwen in een instelling leidt er namelijk toe dat deze instelling ook als legitiem wordt gepercipieerd door burgers. Een legitieme politie betekent dat het gezag ervan erkend wordt door de burger en houdt tevens het recht in om dit gezag af te dwingen en macht te gebruiken (Tyler, 2006a; 2006b). De centrale onderzoeksvraag kan met andere woorden vertaald worden naar: ‘Is er iets met het vertrouwen van de burger in politie en de gepercipieerde legitimiteit aan de hand?’ Deze vraag wordt beantwoord door een beschrijvend overzicht te bieden van de mate van het vertrouwen van de burger in de Belgische politie en de gepercipieerde legitimiteit

Onveiligheidsbeleving: de rol van de schoolcontext, kwetsbaarheid en slachtofferschap, Studiedag VVC: Daderschap, slachtofferschap en onveiligheidsbeleving van jonge adolescenten

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Why do Swedes cooperate with the police? A SEM analysis of Tyler's procedural justice model

The present article examines why Swedes cooperate with the police using the framework of the procedural justice theory. This theory assumes that trust in procedural justice and in the effectiveness of the police are important issues in shaping citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy. Additionally, perceived legitimacy is necessary for the recognition of police authority. When citizens recognize the right of the police to exercise authority, they are assumed to feel an obligation to obey the police, and ultimately they will have a greater tendency to cooperate with them. Because of the ongoing discussion about the meaning and conceptualization of the concept of ‘legitimacy’, some additional ideas are described and are also taken into account in the model that we tested. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to do the analysis, which was conducted on data available from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 5. The results indicate that trust in the procedural justice of the police plays an important role in the explanation of citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police through perceptions of moral alignment and feelings of obligation to obey the police. However, there is still a high percentage of individual variance in willingness to cooperate with the police that cannot be explained by the model we tested. The implications of the findings are discussed