External Procedural Justice: Do Just Supervisors Shape Officer Trust and Willingness to Take the Initiative With the Public?

• Author: Robert P. Peacock,Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich,Maarten Van Craen,Irena Cajner Mraović,Krunoslav Borovec,Marko Prpić
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567721996790
• Published date: 01 June 2023
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Original Articles

Original Article

External Procedural Justice:

Do Just Supervisors Shape

Officer Trust and Willingness

to Take the Initiative With

the Public?

Robert P. Peacock

1

, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich

2

,

Maarten Van Craen

3

, Irena Cajner Mraovic

´

4

,

Krunoslav Borovec

5

, and Marko Prpic

´

6

Abstract

Decades of empirical research have shaped our understanding of organizational justice in the work-

place and public assessments of police procedures on the street, butonly recently has a nascent wave

of research sought to better understand the role that officer perceptions of supervisory procedural

justice play in shaping their (un)fair interactions with the public. The nascent research testing this

relationship has focused on the evidence that officer perceptions of trust in the public is a pathway

between internal procedural justice and externalprocedural justice. This article tests the role of trust

and a parallel pathway that incorporates the concepts of work engagement and personal initiative in

the procedural justice literature. Relying on a survey of 638 Croatian police officers, this study finds

that the effect ofsupervisory procedural justiceon officers’ external procedural justice is positive but

indirect through a measure of trust in the public and the proposed engagement/initiative mechanism.

The implications of these findings for research and police practice are discussed.

Keywords

procedural justice, trust, work engagement, personal initiative

Four decades ago, Tyler and Folger (1980) pioneered the application of procedural justice theory

to police agencies using a public survey in Evanston, IL. Hundreds of studies across the globe

1

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

2

School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

3

Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of Leuven, Belgium

4

Department of Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, Croatia

5

Croatian Ministry of Interior, Zagreb, Croatia

6

Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Corresponding Author:

Robert P. Peacock, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA.

Email: rpeacock@fiu.edu

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continue to refine our understanding on how fair and just procedures shape the public’s attitudes and

behavior toward the police. Over the last decade, policing scholars and practitioners seeking to

promote procedural justice on the street have built on the findings of past organizational studies to

better understand the antecedents that influence police officers’ commitment to procedural justice

(Bradford & Quinton, 2014; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Schafer, 2013; Tankebe, 2014; Trinkner

et al., 2016; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011).

Progress on procedural justice research depends on gaining greater insights into the role that

officer perceptions and judgments have in shaping the actions of those officers in the field. As part of

this effort, Van Craen (2016b) proposed a work relations framework for police agencies that starts

with officer perceptions of the internal procedural justice (IPJ) employed by their supervisors that

affect the officer’s behavior on the street including the officer’s external procedural justice (EPJ). A

nascent wave of studies has supported either a direct or indirect IPJ and EPJ relationship in Van

Craen’s conceptual model (C. M. Donner & Olson, 2019; Kutnjak Ivkovic´ et al., 2019; Sun et al.,

2018; Sun et al., 2019; Sun et al., 2020; Van Craen & Skogan, 2017; Wu et al., 2017; Wu et al.,

2019). The work relations framework has served as a platform for testing a number of mechanisms

linking supervisory and officer procedural fairness, such as the role of officer trust in the public,

positive and negative emotions, job satisfaction, commitment to community policing, and moral

alignment with the public. In addition, other police researchers have identified supplementary

mediators, such as compliance with supervisors and policies of the organization, organizational

identification, and officers’ self-legitimacy (Bradford & Quinton, 2014; Haas et al., 2015; Tankebe

&Meˇsko, 2015; Trinkner et al., 2016; Tyler et al., 2007), indicating that the relationship between

fair supervision and fair policing is truly multifaceted.

This article introduces the concepts of work engagement and personal initiative into the model of

IPJ and EPJ. It tests whether trust in the public and work engagement and personal initiative is part of

the antecedent paths leading to just police procedures in Croatia. Past procedural justice studies in

politically transitioning or economically developing countries have generally resulted in a weaker role

for EPJ in the classic Tylerian legitimacy models (see Bradford et al., 2013; Jackson et al., 2014;

Peacock, 2018; Tankebe, 2008). Whil e Croatia has stood out in the Western Balkans for taking

European Union-integration reform steps, it still remains challenged by key indicators of good

governance (e.g., the recent decline in World Bank rankings for corruption controls and the legal

framework for rule of law; Pere, 2015). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis of officer

survey data will test whether, in Croatia, procedurally fair policing is linked to procedurally fair

supervision and examine whether officers’ trust in the public, work engagement, and personal initia-

tive take indirect roles in the association of organizational IPJ with officer EPJ on the street.

Literature Review

Most scholarship on just police procedures begin their literature review with Tom Tyler and his

adoption of Thibaut and Walker’s (1975) concept of procedural justice. In developing his frame-

work, Van Craen (2016b) went farther back in the organizational justice canon to Thibaut and

Kelley’s (1959) social exchange theory that views fair treatment by supervisors as part of a larger

social exchange in which beneficial personal behavior is an exchangeable resource.

Drawing on contemporary social exchange studies (see Colquitt et al., 2013), Van Craen (2016a,

2016b) developed a work relations framework that models the role that IPJ has on stimulating EPJ.

Specifically, Van Craen’s framework is based on the expectation that officer attitudes and behavior

are influenced, and thus partly shaped, by their supervisors. The model expects that, to some extent,

officers will treat the public in a manner they learn from superiors in the organization. It predicts a

direct effect of fair supervision on fair policing and indirect influences through officers’ trust in

citizens, anger and frustration, and job satisfaction and morale (see Figure 1). Prior tests of the

110 International Criminal Justice Review 33(2)