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“An exceptional piece of scholarship on policing and police reform. Rigorous and thoughtful, its careful methodology and provocative conclusions on procedural justice illuminate key challenges for political leaders, policy makers, and practitioners who strive to improve police community relations in America. Must-reading for police researchers!”—Steven Mastrofski, George Mason University
“A major contribution to the study of procedural justice in policing. Based on careful empirical research, this timely book challenges widespread assumptions about procedural justice. It provides a potent reminder that much remains to be learned about how people form perceptions of the police, and how police agencies can influence these perceptions.”—Edward R. Maguire, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University
“Since Ferguson, the nation has been searching for solutions to the legitimacy crisis that has engulfed policing. Procedural justice was the number one reform put forward by President Obama’s commission. This book digs into this proposal and provides the best evidence to date on how it actually affects police behavior and public acceptance of being policed.”—Wesley G. Skogan, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University
List of contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
1. The Procedural Justice Model as Reform
2. Police Departments as Institutionalized Organizations
3. Police Legitimacy
4. Procedural Justice in Citizens’ Subjective Experiences
5. Citizens’ Dissatisfaction in Their Own Words
6. Procedural Justice in Police Action
7. Citizens’ Subjective Experience and Police Action
8. Procedural Justice and Management Accountability
9. Procedural Justice and Street-Level Sensemaking
10. Reflections on Police Reform
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Robert E. Worden is Director of the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Sarah J. McLean is Associate Director and Director of Research and Technical Assistance at the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety.
Summary
In the US, the exercise of police authority - and the public's trust that police authority is used properly - is a recurring concern. In this book, the authors argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage.
Additional text
"This research is an exemplary demonstration of not only the power of what Morris Janowitz called the “engineering model” of social science research . . . but also of its limitations. Worden and McLean’s findings, some of them surprising, indicate why the procedural justice reform cannot make much difference."
