Police Violence, Procedural Justice, and Public Perceptions of Legitimacy

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12416
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Thomas A. Loughran

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

FREDDIE GRAY UNREST

Police Violence, Procedural Justice, and

Public Perceptions of Legitimacy

Thomas A. Loughran

The Pennsylvania State University

For several decades, scholars have argued for an important linkage between individ-

uals’ willing compliance with the law and their attitudes about the legitimacy of

the laws (Mazerolle, Bennett, Davis, Sargeant, and Manning, 2013; Tyler, 1990).

But where do these attitudes about police legitimacy and procedural justice originate, and

how are they shaped by access to new information about policing? Of particular interest

has been attention focused on recent high-profile cases of police violence, such as in the

well-publicized cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice. We now have access

to a seemingly endless supply of information about instances of police conduct, through

channels of social media or perpetual cable news coverage, available to us ostensibly in real

time. Social media and widely used hashtags such as #Ferguson and #HandsUpDontShoot

have become powerful sources for documenting instances of injustice that may ultimately

shape public attitudes toward the police (Bonilla and Rosa, 2015). But does information

accrued from high-profile public events such as these change what individuals think and

how they perceive police legitimacy? Or conversely, are other factors, namely, individuals’

own interactions and personal experiences, more salient for attitude and belief formation?

An accumulating body of evidence reveals that individuals may update certain sets of

subjective beliefs in response to their private information, in this case, information accu-

mulated through their personal experiences (or the experiences of friends and family), such

as arrest or police interaction. Considerably less evidence exists, however, that demonstrates

that individuals are responsive to macro-level policies or events, such as a high-profile police

shooting. This comports with one of the primary theses of a recent review article of procedu-

ral justice by Nagin and Telep (2017: 5), who noted that, “[W]hat has not been established

is whether these associations reflect a causal connection whereby changes in policies that are

effective in changing actual procedurally just treatment of citizens by police and others lead

Direct correspondence to Thomas A. Loughran. Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania

State University, 1011 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802 (e-mail: tal47@psu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12416 C2018 American Society of Criminology 825

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 17 rIssue 4