Encouraging public cooperation with the police: procedural justice and the
(re)production of social identity
Ben Bradford, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford
Tina Murphy, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University
Jon Jackson, Methodology Department, London School of Economics
Extended Abstract
What do people want from their interactions with legal authorities? Are they most interested
in material or other outcomes – do they have a primarily instrumental relationship with the
authority – or are they concerned more with the quality of the interaction itself and, in
particular, with the fairness with which the process is enacted? A growing body of
international work, primarily inspired by Tom Tyler’s procedural justice model (Tyler 2006)
suggests that it is the procedural fairness of interactions with authorities such as police
officers that is most important to those who, for whatever reason, have contact with those
authorities. Moreover, the experience of procedural fairness is linked with trust in the
authority concerned, decision acceptance, legitimacy, and willingness to cooperate in the
future.
Procedural justice in criminal justice contexts refers to impartial service to the law, as
well as fair, respectful and even-handed wielding of power. While fairness is an important
aspect of the behaviour of any criminal justice agency, in this paper we limit the discussion to
the activity of the police, the most visible and accessible face not only of the criminal justice
system but also, arguably, of the state itself. We concentrate primarily on one of the central
concerns of procedural justice theory, that is, the extent to which police behaviour influences
the social identity of people who interact with officers. In essence, the argument is that
procedurally fair policing, marked and demonstrated by neutrality and transparency, by fair,
equitable and respectful treatment, and by a feeling of control (or ‘voice’) on behalf of the
citizen, encourages the idea that the individual and the police are ‘on the same side’. The sense
of shared group membership that procedural justice encourages (or which procedural
injustice inhibits) has important implications in terms of trust, legitimacy and cooperation.
Criminology appears to have recently ‘re-discovered’ social identity as a key aspect of
the field. Approaches as varied as McAra and McVie’s (2012) negotiated order theory,
Bosworth and colleague’s accounts of the identity formation and negation in the globalized
prison and immigration detention complex (e.g. Bosworth and Kaufman 2011), and studies of
the English riots of 2011 (Newburn et al. 2012) have all considered in one way or another the
relationship between inclusion and social belonging, crime and the role of the criminal justice
system as an engine of identity production. Such an emphasis has, of course, a long pedigree
in criminology, stretching right back to anomie, sub-cultural theory and symbolic
interactionism: the recent de-discovery, if that is what it is, builds on both tradition and a
continuous trajectory of work stretching over 70 years. Arguably novel at the current time,
however, is the extent of the attention directed toward the influence criminal justice agencies
may exert on people’s social and cultural, as well as legal, identities. Identity-shaping criminal
justice processes have been linked with breakdowns in relations between the public and
justice agencies and subsequent challenges to the criminal justice system, and to the
possibility that the system can promote, through its actions, actively criminogenic social
formations.
This ‘re-discovery’ resonates with, and indeed as been partly influence by, Tyler’s work
on procedural justice. Crucially, social identity provides a key causal mechanism in the
processes that lead from perceptions of police fairness, to trust, legitimacy, cooperation and,
indeed, compliance with the laws the police represent and enforce. Numerous studies show
how the exercise of authority via the application of fair process strengthens the social bonds
between individuals and authorities that govern them (Tyler and Huo, 2002; Sunshine and
Tyler, 2003a; Tyler, 2011). Individuals establish connections even in groups with only
tenuous bases for group identification (Lind and Tyler, 1988; Tyler and Lind, 1992; Tajfel and
Turner, 1986); they are sensitive to signs and symbols that communicate information about
their status and position within a group (de Cremer and Tyler, 2005); and how authorities
such as the police treat them communicates their status within the group those authorities
represent (Tyler and Blader, 2003). In the context of policing this social group has been jointly
and variously characterized as the nation, state or community (Jackson and Bradford 2009;
Loader and Mulcahy 2003; Reiner 2000; Waddington 1999). The key claim here is, then, that
the strength of people’s identification with these groups is shaped, at least in part and in
certain contexts, by the quality of their interactions with police officers.
The experience of procedural justice or injustice communicates status within the
group, and of particular relevance in this context is the idea that procedural injustice can
communicate stigmatization by authorities (Tyler and Wakslak, 2004). If people perceive that
the way police officers treat them is based not on what they are doing, but on their race,
gender, or age, such behaviour carries negative identity implications, raising critical questions
about whether those on the receiving end are accorded rights pertaining to membership of
the superordinate group (or the rights accorded to group members in good standing).
The procedural justice model has, therefore, developed a robust theoretical framework
for understanding (a) what, precisely, it is about the behaviour of criminal justice actors and
organizations that might influence the social identities of those subject to their authority and
(b) the implications arising from the identity shaping aspects of criminal justice processes.
Research has suggested: that the police represent, symbolically and indeed practically, the
dominant social group or order; that officer’s behaviour in relation to individuals and
subordinate groups is imbued with identity relevant meaning; that such meaning is
transmitted primarily via the procedural fairness (or otherwise) of police activity; that
procedural fairness encourages people to feel included and valued within the group the police
represent; and that this inclusion is associated with trust in the police, the extent to which
people grant it legitimacy, and their willingness to cooperate with officers, defer to police
authority, and comply with the law (Bradford 2013; Jackson et al. 2012; Sunshine and Tyler
2003a, 2003b; Tyler 2006; Tyler and Huo 2002).
A key underlying assumption of all the research described above is that the behaviour
of criminal justice agencies has a causal effect on identity. With regard to legal/bureaucratic
identities this seems almost self-evident. The actions (or omissions) of police officers assign
people to different administrative or legal categories (Ericson and Haggerty 1997), a process
that can have significant effects on their lives. What is less clear is the extent to which criminal
justice organizations exert pressure on people’s cultural and social identities, which are by
definition subject to a much wider range of influences and which seem likely to pre-date
experiences of the behaviour of police officers and other criminal justice agents. Yet, it is
precisely these subjective identities that provide a key aspect of the putative causal process
linking procedural fairness to legitimacy and cooperation. Yet, outside a few foundational
studies (e.g. Tyler and Huo 2002) work on procedural justice and social identity in criminal
justice contexts has been constrained by the use of cross-sectional data, making it impossible
to disentangle, or even firmly identify, causal processes linking the activity of criminal justice
agencies and social identity. Does police activity really shape people’s identities? Absent such
a process a key causal mechanism of the procedural justice model falls.
In the current paper we use panel data from a representative sample survey of
Australians to explore the associations between procedural justice, social identity, and
people’s willingness to cooperate with the police. While we are unable, with such data, to
demonstrate causality, we are able unravel a convincing set of associations that link change in
judgements about the procedural fairness of the police with change in relevant social
identities. Our findings suggest that procedural justice is linked to police legitimacy partly
directly and partly via the intervening mechanism of social identity, and that the association
between procedural justice and propensity to cooperate with the police is partly mediated by
legitimacy and partly by social identity.
These findings are important for a number of reasons. Building on other recent studies
(e.g. Bradford 2012), they provide what is to our knowledge the most robust empirical
evidence to date that the procedural justice of police activity does indeed shape people’s
identities in relation to social groups the police represent. Equally, however, they open up
avenues for further exploration of the role the criminal justice system can play in shaping the
subjective social identities of people who come into contact with it and, consequently, their
readiness to cooperate with the those agencies and their willingness to engage in other kinds
of ‘pro-social’ activity. Such possibilities have many positive implications; conversely, our
findings underline the potential for police and other criminal justice agents to act in ways that
undermine people’s social identities and damage their propensity to cooperate within and on
behalf of the group those agents represent. As ever, we are left with the idea that the fairness
of police activity is of central concern.
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