Consent Searches as a Threat to Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

• Date: 01 November 2013
• Published date: 01 November 2013
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403412464547
• Author: Jacinta M. Gau
• Subject Matter: Articles

Criminal Justice Policy Review

24(6) 759 –777

© 2012 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403412464547

cjp.sagepub.com

464547CJP24610.1177/088740341246

4547Criminal Justice Policy ReviewGau

1University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jacinta M. Gau, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Central Florida, PO Box 161600, Orlando,

FL 32816-1600, USA.

Email: jgau@ucf.edu

Consent Searches as a

Threat to Procedural

Justice and Police

Legitimacy: An Analysis

of Consent Requests

During Traffic Stops

Jacinta M. Gau1

Abstract

Consent searches during traffic stops offer police a way to expediently check

motorists’ vehicles for contraband. Asking drivers for consent to search their vehicles,

however, may cause them to feel negatively about the encounter and, consequently, to

question officers’ motives for pulling them over. The present study analyzes stopped

motorists’ reactions to consent requests; specifically, consent requests are theorized

to damage these individuals’ perceptions of procedural justice and, moreover, of the

legitimacy of the stop itself. Logistic regression analyses of a nationally representative

sample support these hypotheses. Policy implications include the need for judicious

use of consent searches, as they appear to be a form of procedural injustice that

erodes police legitimacy.

Keywords

consent searches, procedural justice, traffic stops, police legitimacy, traffic citations

Consent searches are a source of considerable controversy. These types of searches

have become integral to the war on drugs, and are a popular way for officers to gain

access to motorists’ vehicles that they would not otherwise be granted (Harris, 2002).

Article

760 Criminal Justice Policy Review 24(6)

Proponents argue that police officers’ ability to ask for consent to search is vital to

effective crime control, but critics contend that consent searches allow police to cir-

cumvent the Fourth Amendment and to profile or harass certain classes of drivers.

One context in which consent searches have not yet been fully considered, but that

merits investigation, is that of the way that stopped motorists react to officers’

requests for consent to search their vehicles. Much research has used official data to

attempt to determine whether police actually are engaged in racially disproportionate

search behavior (e.g., Warren & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2009), but relatively little atten-

tion has been paid to the psychological impact of consent searches (for an exception,

see Engel, 2005).

With regard to perceptions of police behavior, the theory of procedural justice and

police legitimacy stands out. Procedural justice is a social-psychological construct that

revolves around the authority differential between police and citizens, and around offi-

cers’ use of rational, neutral, and transparent decision-making (e.g., Reisig, Bratton, &

Gertz, 2007; Tyler, 2006). When people see the police as treating civilians fairly and

respectfully, their sense that the institution of policing is legitimate is heightened.

Police legitimacy is said to exist when the public views the policing institution as pos-

sessing the moral authority to enforce the law and as deserving of respect and compli-

ance (Tyler, 2006). Procedural justice is, essentially, tangible evidence demonstrating

that police are trustworthy and are deserving of the coercive authority granted to them

by the state.

Officers’ requests for consent to search, being a show of authority and display of

suspicion, may violate the tenets of procedural justice and thereby be a source of

diminished police legitimacy. Irrespective of a given officer’s subjective intent in issu-

ing a consent request (see Engel & Johnson, 2006), the motorist on the receiving end

of that request may feel targeted, singled out, or unfairly viewed as a possible criminal.

Motorists may, moreover, extrapolate from the specific request and become suspi-

cious of officers’ motives for conducting the stop in the first place, as people’s specific

opinions about police actions may impact their overall levels of satisfaction with the

institution as a whole (Brandl, Frank, Worden, & Bynum, 1994).

The present study posits the request to search motorists’ vehicles during traffic

stops as a form of procedural injustice. Two hypotheses are made. First, it is predicted

that consent requests will have a suppressive impact on drivers’ perceptions of stop-

based procedural justice; that is, it is expected that the consent request reduces overall

perceptions of the quality of treatment provided by officers. Second, it is hypothesized

that drivers who are asked for consent will be more likely to suspect that the officers

who pulled them over did so with insidious or duplicitous motives, and to therefore see

those stops as being without legitimacy. These hypotheses are tested using the 2008

Police–Public Contact Survey (PPCS; U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice

Statistics, 2011a). The results have implications for police policy in the use of consent

searches during routine traffic stops.