Shared Race/Ethnicity, Court Procedural Justice, and Self‐Regulating Beliefs: A Study of Female Offenders

• Published date: 01 June 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12137
• Date: 01 June 2015

Shared Race/Ethnicity, Court Procedural Justice,

and Self-Regulating Beliefs: A Study of Female

Offenders

Thomas Baker Justin T. Pickett

Dhara M. Amin Kristin Golden

Karla Dhungana Marc Gertz

Laura Bedard

Using survey data from a sample of w hite, black, and Hispanic inc arcer-

ated females (N 5554), we exam ine if the theoreticall y hypothesized and

empirically demonstr ated relationship betw een procedural justice an d

obligation to obey the l aw is substantiated among a sample of offenders

and explore the impact t hat sharing the race/ethnic ity of the defense

attorney and prosecuto r in their most recent con viction has on female

inmates’ perceptions of co urt procedural justice and t heir perceived

obligation to obey the law. The findin gs reveal that female off enders who

perceive the courts as mo re procedurally just r eport a significantly gr eater

obligation to obey the law. In additio n, white female inmates who h ad a

white prosecutor were si gnificantly more likely to p erceive the courts

as procedurally just. N on-whites, though, perce ive the courts as more

fair if they encountered a m inority prosecutor reg ardless of whether the

prosecutor was black or Hispanic.

Prior research demonstrates the effectiveness of procedural

justice for securing the public’s perceived obligation to obey the

law (Jackson et al. 2012; Mazerolle et al. 2013; Reisig et al. 2012;

Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler 2006; Tyler and Huo 2002; Wolfe

2011). This finding is important because it indicates that criminal

justice actors’ authority and ability to secure public compliance

may be strongly tied to the fairness of the procedures they use—

a factor authorities have some control over (Mazerolle et al.

2013; Sunshine and Tyler 2003). There remain, however, several

areas for additional exploration in the extant literature on

process-based models of regulation.

First, previous studies assessing the impact of procedural jus-

tice on people’s obligation to obey the law have focused almost

exclusively on perceptions of police, devoting far less attention to

Please direct all correspondence to Thomas Baker, Department of Criminal Justice,

University of Central Florida, P.O.Box 161600, Orlando, FL 32816-1600;

e-mail: trb03c@my.fsu.edu.

Law & Society Review, Volume 49, Number 2 (2015)

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C2015 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

433

perceptions of the courts (Mazerolle et al. 2013; Sunshine and

Tyler 2003). This is surprising because, as Garland (1990: 71–72)

has explained, the contemporary courtroom is “the forum where

justice is done” and “a ritual in which society as a whole is

deemed to participate.” As such, the perceived fairness of court

procedures may play a particularly important role in legitimizing

or delegitimizing the authority of the law in the eyes of both the

public and offenders. In addition, there are reasons to expect

that prior findings concerning the police may not generalize to

the courts. Prior research, for example, suggests that people’s

perceptions of police are consistently and substantially more posi-

tive than their perceptions of the courts, which likely reflects citi-

zens’ greater familiarity and contact with police (Roberts and

Hough 2005). Indeed, Tyler (2006) found that individuals rely

more heavily on procedural justice perceptions when evaluating

perceptions of the courts versus perceptions of the police. There

are also factors unique to court processing—such as the type of

attorney (private versus public) representing the defendant and

plea-bargaining negotiations—that may influence court proce-

dural justice perceptions. Thus, we explore the antecedents of

people’s perceptions of the courts and how they may uniquely

impact people’s obligation to obey the law.

Second, existing theoretical scholarship suggests that racial or

ethnic identification with criminal justice actors—that is, sharing

the racial or ethnic characteristics of legal authorities—may result

in more positive assessments of those authorities (Tyler and Huo

2002; Weitzer and Tuch 2006). Much of this work extends from

the theoretical propositions of the group-value model which sug-

gest that being able to identify with an authority may increase

perceptions of status which in turn increases perceptions of pro-

cedural justice (Lind and Tyler 1988). Yet empirical evidence

about this hypothesized relationship is scarce, and the findings

from the handful of studies that have explored the issue have

been mixed (Kelleher and Wolak 2007; Scherer and Curry 2010;

Sharp and Johnson 2009; Tyler and Huo 2002). Thus, there is a

question as to whether the diversification of criminal justice

organizations, done in part to enhance the legitimacy of those

organizations among minorities, is actually effective. For example,

an alternative perspective extending from critical race theory

(Haney-L

opez 2003) suggests that any support for institutions

such as the criminal justice system which historically have pro-

tected the rights of whites over minorities is tantamount to sup-

porting white hegemony. As such, interacting with non-white

legal authorities may do little to enhance minorities’ perceptions

of the criminal justice system. Thus, this study further investi-

gates the impact of shared racial identity within the criminal

434 A Study of Female Offenders

justice system by examining how sharing one’s race/ethnicity with

court actors affects individuals’ perceptions of the courts and

their obligation to obey the law.

Third, this study builds on the small but growing body of lit-

erature that examines what is known about both the racial corre-

lates and potential consequences of procedural justice

perceptions among persons who are actually embedded in a

criminal lifestyle and at a high risk for future offending, such as

inmates (for example, see Casper, Tyler, and Fisher 1988; Fagan

and Piquero 2007; Papachristos et al. 2012; Piquero et al. 2005).

Likely because of the difficulties in gaining access to and survey-

ing inmates (Pickett et al. 2014), previous investigations have

focused almost exclusively on either the general public or on

minor offenders, such as persons stopped for traffic violations or

tax offenders (Murphy 2004 2005; Tyler 2006). In addition, the

existing studies that explore offenders’ procedural justice percep-

tions have largely concentrated on male inmates’ views about the

staff and processes of correctional facilities (Beijersbergen et al.

2014; Henderson et al. 2010; Reisig & Me

sko 2009) with fewer

studies examining female offenders (Tatar et al. 2012). We fur-

ther develop this literature by examining female inmates’ views

about court procedural justice.

This study addresses these gaps in the literature using data

from a survey of female inmates incarcerated at the largest

female correctional facility in Florida. The survey included meas-

ures of the racial/ethnic characteristics of the court actors with

whom the inmates interacted, and the inmates’ perceptions of

court procedural justice and obligation to obey the law. Our focus

on female offenders is important because they have received less

attention in research than male offenders (Belknap 2007), yet the

proportion of serious crime committed by female offenders has

increased in recent decades (Lauritsen et al. 2009). In the sec-

tions that follow, we review the theoretical work that informs our

analyses as well as the relevant prior research, after which we

describe our methodology and discuss the results of our study.

Theoretical Background and Prior Research

Procedural Justice and the Role of Voice

A key assumption on which theories of procedural justice are

based posits that regardless of the outcome, individuals may per-

ceive the process of an interaction as just if certain procedural cri-

teria are met (Lind and Tyler 1988; Thibaut and Walker 1975;

Tyler 1994). In other words, how a decision is made may be as

important to individuals as the actual decision. Just procedures

Baker,Pickett, Amin, Golden, Dhungana, Gertz, & Bedard 435