The Distinct Role of Peers and Supervisors in Shaping Officers’ Just and Unjust Interactions with Citizens

• Author: Robert P. Peacock,Yuning Wu,Sanja Kutnjak Ivković,Ivan Sun,Marijan Vinogradac,Valentina Pavlović Vinogradac
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221140353
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2023, Vol. 50, No. 3, March 2023, 374 –391.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221140353

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2022 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

374

THE DISTINCT ROLE OF PEERS AND

SUPERVISORS IN SHAPING OFFICERS’

JUST AND UNJUST INTERACTIONS

WITH CITIZENS

ROBERT P. PEACOCK

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida International University

YUNING WU

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Wayne State University

SANJA KUTNJAK IVKOVIĆ

School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University

IVAN SUN

Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware

MARIJAN VINOGRADAC

Vinogradska Nursing School

VALENTINA PAVLOVIĆ VINOGRADAC

Social Work and Social Policy, University of Zagreb

This study steps outside the dominant supervisor-centric approach to organizational justice to examine the impact of peer

officers on both procedural justice and injustice in officer–citizen interactions. Recent scandals over the failure of officers to

not intercede or object to a colleague’s misconduct has led to a growing policy and research interest in peer influence, train-

ing, and intervention programs. A structural equation modeling analysis on a cross-national survey of officers decomposed

the direct and indirect effects of peer procedural justice (PPJ) on anticipated officer just and unjust interactions with the

public. The study’s finding that PPJ has a greater impact than supervisory procedural justice on officer anticipated just and

unjust behavior suggests that policing studies should expand the modeling of organizational justice to include the role of

interactions with peer officers. The outcome also adds to the nascent research seeking to better understand how peer-level

interventions can promote procedurally just policing.

Keywords: peer influence; procedural justice; organizational justice

INTRODUCTION

On July 24, 2019, as Cleveland officer John Petkac used a taser without any warning on

a taunting bystander, three other officers looked on choosing neither to intervene nor report

this misconduct. The “blue wall of silence” on peer officer misconduct is not rare across

AUTHORS’ NOTE: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert P. Peacock,

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida International University, PCA 353, FIU, Miami, FL

33199; e-mail: rpeacock@fiu.edu.

1140353CJBXXX10.1177/00938548221140353Criminal Justice and BehaviorPeacock et al. / The Distinct Role of Peers and Supervisors

research-article2022

Peacock et al. / THE DISTINCT ROLE OF PEERS AND SUPERVISORS 375

criminal justice institutions or countries (Dewey et al., 2021; Kutnjak Ivković, 2005).

Nevertheless, ever-present cameras and irrepressible social media across the globe have

widened the lens on how we perceive police misconduct as not just the actions of the

accused officers but also their peer officers at the scene. This has fueled a search among

practitioners and researchers on how colleagues can influence procedurally just police–cit-

izen interactions (Aronie & Lopez, 2017; Butler, 2020; IACP, 2021). As part of this greater

focus on peer officers, this study proposes a construct of peer procedural justice (PPJ) to

determine if an officer’s perception of how they are treated by colleagues impacts their

attitudes and behavior on the job.

Recent police scholarship suggests that officer perceptions of their peers may impact

officer behavior on the street (Getty et al., 2016; Quispe-Torreblanca & Stewart, 2019;

Trinkner et al., 2016), but an independent PPJ measure has not been tested as an antecedent

to police–citizen interactions. This study sheds light on this research gap by examining the

effect of officer perceptions of their colleagues as part of a larger test of organizational jus-

tice on policing outcomes. Specifically, we test whether PPJ, in parallel with supervisory

procedural justice (SPJ), influences officers’ perceptions of fairness (external procedural

justice) and misconduct (external procedural injustice) on the street.

Our study argues that PPJ—officers’ judgments on their colleagues’ willingness to listen

to and respect their views—matters. In line with the SPJ role demonstrated across organiza-

tional justice studies on four continents, we hypothesize that when colleagues demonstrate

PPJ (e.g., enabling voice and showing respect), officers may model such behaviors in the

communities they work and treat citizens in a similar manner. Our analysis decomposes the

direct and indirect impacts that PPJ has on officer perceptions of just and unjust police–

citizen interactions. The study makes a novel and important contribution to police organiza-

tional justice research by adding the hypothesized role of PPJ on self-perceived officer

behavior directly and indirectly through psychological states hypothesized from past peer

officer research as mediators in the model (Haas et al., 2015; Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2020;

Sun et al., 2019; Van Craen & Skogan, 2017).

LITERATURE REVIEW

In seeking to classify the expanding organizational behavior research on the impact of

equity and fairness on institutional outcomes, Greenberg (1987) is widely credited with

coining the expression organizational justice studies. The term was intended to encompass

all the disparate research examining the impact that employees’ perceptions of their organi-

zation’s procedures, decisions, and actions has on those employees’ attitudes and behavior

on the job. Nevertheless, scholars now largely treat organizational justice as another term

for supervisory justice as most researchers limit their analysis to perceptions of the fairness

of management (Li et al., 2015).

The study of coworker relations has been a significant part of social psychology studies

at work for years with Schneider (1987) pioneering the argument that people make the

workplace. In a meta-study of the role of coworker relations on organizational outcomes,

Chiaburu and Harrison (2008) found across 161 studies that coworker actions (positive or

negative) do impact the attitudes and performance of their colleagues. Though coworker

relations continue to appear a part of studies on job satisfaction, absenteeism, and work-

place performance, Chiaburu and Harrison (2008) concluded that peers “have been given