Deviant Peer Associations and Perceived Police Legitimacy: Is There a Connection?

• Author: Sara Z. Evans,Jon Gist,Frank Valentino Ferdik
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Date: 01 October 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0887403417742949
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403417742949

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2019, Vol. 30(8) 1127 –1162

© The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403417742949

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Article

Deviant Peer Associations and

Perceived Police Legitimacy:

Is There a Connection?

Frank Valentino Ferdik1, Jon Gist2, and Sara Z. Evans1

Abstract

For police officers to effectively enforce the law, it is imperative that citizens perceive

of them as legitimate authority figures. Although procedural justice has shown to be a

salient predictor of perceived police legitimacy, a recent line of studies has discovered

other significant correlates of this outcome. No study though has explored whether

deviant peer associations share a relationship with law enforcement legitimacy

evaluations. Questionnaire data were collected from a convenience sample of

university students (N = 623) to determine whether measures of friend’s attitudes

favorable toward criminal acts as well as friend’s actual criminal behaviors predicted

both the obligation to obey and trust in police constructs of police legitimacy. Results

indicated that friend’s attitudes supportive of criminal behaviors negatively predicted

each police legitimacy concept, while somewhat unexpectedly, respondents who

reported having many friends who engaged in past crimes were more likely to obey

the police. Policy implications are discussed.

Keywords

police legitimacy, obligation to obey, trust in police, procedural justice, deviant peers

Introduction

An area of research that has received considerable attention within the broader social

science discipline concerns the manner in which order is maintained throughout

society. Several scholars have hypothesized that citizen obedience to the law is largely

1University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA

2University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Frank Valentino Ferdik, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of West Florida,

11000 University Parkway, Pensacola, FL 32514, USA.

Email: fferdik@uwf.edu

742949CJPXXX10.1177/0887403417742949Criminal Justice Policy ReviewFerdik et al.

research-article2017

1128 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(8)

an artifact of an individual’s neighborhood conditions (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993),

exposure to strain (Agnew & White, 1992), or even self-control levels (Gottfredson &

Hirschi, 1990), yet others have instead contended that law enforcement personnel play

a pivotal role in ensuring that people subscribe to society’s various regulations

(Sampson & Cohen, 1988; Sherman & Weisburd, 1995). Police officers are equipped

with different resources designed to assist them in their fight against crime, with per-

haps the most notable one consisting of the state-sanctioned authority to use force or

other coercive tactics (especially against unruly citizens). Use of such aggressive

policing measures, however, has been criticized not only for failing to produce confor-

mity but also for actually resulting in defiant behaviors on behalf of the public (Ferdik,

Kaminski, Cooney, & Sevigny, 2014; Sherman, 1993). An alternative, and perhaps

even safer strategy designed to bring people in line with legal mandates, was proposed

by Tyler (1990) who explained that when private citizens judge the police as legitimate

and trustworthy figures of authority, they are more likely to follow police directives

and obey the law. Apart from promoting greater public acceptance of the law, enhanced

police legitimacy perceptions have also been associated with people’s willingness to

cooperate with the police and report suspected criminal activity (Lee, Steinberg, &

Piquero, 2010; Murphy, Hinds, & Fleming, 2008; Reisig, Bratton, & Gertz, 2007;

Reisig & Lloyd, 2009; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Fagan, 2008).

Tyler (1990) hypothesized that the key factor related to public perceptions of police

legitimacy is the way in which officers interact with citizens, and specifically, whether

officers behave in procedurally fair manners. When law enforcement treats people

with respect, affords them a voice in legal outcomes, and makes them feel like valued

members of the community, citizens are far more likely to judge the police as legiti-

mate. Each of Tyler’s (1990) assertions has been subsumed under the broader proce-

dural justice theory, which has been upheld by countless empirical examinations

(Barkworth & Murphy, 2014; Gau, 2011; Mesko, Reisig, & Tankebe, 2012; Murphy &

Gaylor, 2010; Murphy, Tyler, & Curtis, 2009; Papachristos, Meares, & Fagan, 2012;

Paternoster, Brame, Bachman, & Sherman, 1996; Tankebe, 2013; Tyler & Wakslak,

2004). Specifically, regarding the procedural justice–police legitimacy connection

though and Tyler’s (1990) statement that the former is the dominant (and sometimes

only) factor associated with law enforcement legitimacy judgments, a growing body

of research has now discovered other significant predictors of this outcome that include

social identity (Bradford, Murphy, & Jackson, 2014), strain (Ferdik, 2014), and low

self-control (Wolfe, 2011). Largely left unexplored within this collection of studies,

however, is the relationship between deviant peer associations and police legitimacy

evaluations.

Expanding upon the core theoretical propositions of Shaw and McKay (1942),

Sutherland (1947) held that groups of individuals are differentially arranged across

society. Whereas some individuals, for instance, are exposed to prosocial environ-

ments marked by a respect for the law and its enforcers, others are socialized into

networks that are supportive of antisocial values and behaviors. These varying social-

ization experiences, for Sutherland (1947), were labeled as differential association and

the key factors connected to not only the acquisition of definitions favorable toward

Ferdik et al. 1129

violating the law but also the actual commission of delinquent acts. Criminal conduct

then arises when one is exposed more heavily to a social environment that endorses a

deviant lifestyle because that person learns to internalize and then act upon definitions

that are supportive of delinquency. Sutherland’s (1947) differential association theory

has been classified as a learning theory of criminal behavior where individuals exposed

to an excess of definitions favorable toward violating the law become delinquent

because they have learned to acquire criminal tendencies and values. Overall,

Sutherland’s (1947) theory of crime has been applied to a host of criminal behaviors

committed by individuals across different age ranges, and has further been the subject

of much empirical scrutiny, being met with mostly supportive evidence (Jensen, 1972;

Matsueda, 1988; Matsueda & Heimer, 1987; Orcutt, 1987).

Following Sutherland’s (1947) line of reasoning, it is argued in this article that if

individuals can be socialized to endorse values supportive of crime because of the

social connections they maintain, then perhaps those same relationships can exert an

influence on a person’s judgments of the police. Although several studies have exam-

ined this specific relationship and actually found socialization variables such as peer

influences to significantly predict general attitudes toward the police (Brick, Taylor, &

Esbensen, 2009; Romain & Hassell, 2014), no study yet has examined whether crimi-

nal peer associations predict law enforcement legitimacy evaluations. To address this

literature void then, survey data gathered from a convenience sample of university

students were used to examine whether two criminal peer association variables signifi-

cantly predicted perceived police legitimacy. Countless studies have affirmed a strong

connection between procedural fairness and police legitimacy perceptions, yet this

relationship has yet to be tested in a model inclusive of criminal peer association vari-

ables. Findings from this study then not only enlighten us as to other possible predic-

tors of perceived police legitimacy, but they may also contribute to vital policy

recommendations regarding police–citizen interactions.

Procedural Justice Theory

Shortcomings associated with police use of force have prompted many to question the

utility of this policing strategy in terms of securing public adherence to the law and

whether there are more effective (and safer) alternatives. Grounded in sociopsycho-

logical arguments, procedural justice theory holds that when public members perceive

of authority figures as trustworthy and legitimate, they are likely to behave in proso-

cial manners and comply with requested demands (Sunshine, 2006; Sunshine & Tyler,

2003; Thibault & Walker, 1975; Tyler, 1990). Specifically, regarding law enforcement

officials, when laypeople regard the police as legitimate representatives of society

who have the moral right and obligation to enforce the law, voluntary compliance with

societal norms and cooperation with the police will follow. Legitimacy has been con-

ceptualized as a “psychological property of an authority, institution or social arrange-

ment that leads those connected to it to believe that is appropriate, proper and just”

(Jackson et al., 2012, p. 1054). Jackson et al. (2012) further referenced how legitimacy

“may be instantiated not only in obedience as prerogative, but in the belief that the