Measuring Procedural Justice in Police-Citizen Encounters

Abstract

Procedural justice has dominated recent discussions of police interactions with the public. It has mostly been measured from the perspective of citizens (using surveys or interviews), but several important questions about predictors and outcomes of fair police treatment are best answered using direct observations of police-citizen interactions. Building on prior observational studies, we develop and validate an instrument for measuring procedural justice as it is exercised by the police in the natural setting of their encounters with the public. In doing so, we adopt a “formative” rather than the common “reflective” approach, based on the assumption that specific behaviors that make up procedural justice do not reflect a single underlying construct but rather form one. We justify this approach and validate our instrument accordingly. We also discuss the implications of our measurement for future research on procedural justice in police behavior.

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