Emma Antrobus

Procedural justice and legitimacy in policing

Introduction.- Effective Approaches Using the Principles of Procedural Justice.- Use of Research Evidence.- Barriers to Implementation.- Mechanisms that Help Translation.- Conclusions.

Community Norms, Procedural Justice, and the Public’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy:

A significant body of research has demonstrated the importance of procedurally fair policing in fostering citizens’ feelings of obligation to obey the police. A handful of recent studies have begun to explore the role of community processes within this relationship. They show perceptions of police use of procedural justice, and their consequences can vary according to community context. The present study utilizes data collected within a randomized controlled trial of procedural justice in policing, the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET). We find perceived community norms about obeying the police are strongly associated with individuals’ own feelings of obligation to obey police. Moreover, this relationship holds net of individual assessments of police. Second, procedurally just policing appears to have a greater effect on the obligation to obey police for those who believe others in their community feel less obligated to obey the police. Results demonstrate that one’s ties to the community can therefore moderate the associations between procedural justice and the obligation to obey police. The findings are interpreted within a social-psychological framework.

Nonresponse bias in randomized controlled experiments in criminology: Putting the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET) under a microscope.

Objectives: The goal of this article is to examine whether or not the results of the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET)—a randomized controlled trial that tested the impact of procedural justice policing on citizen attitudes toward police—were affected by different types of nonresponse bias. Method: We use two methods (Cochrane and Elffers methods) to explore nonresponse bias: First, we assess the impact of the low response rate by examining the effects of nonresponse group differences between the experimental and control conditions and pooled variance under different scenarios. Second, we assess the degree to which item response rates are influenced by the control and experimental conditions. Results: Our analysis of the QCET data suggests that our substantive findings are not influenced by the low response rate in the trial. The results are robust even under extreme conditions, and statistical significance of the results would only be compromised in cases where the pooled variance was much larger for the nonresponse group and the difference between experimental and control conditions was greatly diminished. We also find that there were no biases in the item response rates across the experimental and control conditions. Conclusion: RCTs that involve field survey responses—like QCET—are potentially compromised by low response rates and how item response rates might be influenced by the control or experimental conditions. Our results show that the QCET results were not sensitive to the overall low response rate across the experimental and control conditions and the item response rates were not significantly different across the experimental and control groups. Overall, our analysis suggests that the results of QCET are robust and any biases in the survey responses do not significantly influence the main experimental findings.

Comparing Police and Public Perceptions of a Routine Traffic Encounter

Police perceptions of procedural justice are less well understood than citizen perceptions. Our paper compares the views of police officers and citizens of a routine Australian policing encounter, the Random Breath Test. We examine perceptions of two versions of their encounter: a business as usual and a more explicitly procedurally just interaction. Our results indicate that the procedurally just version affected the views of police officers, but not drivers, regarding the reasons for conducting Random Breath Tests. It also appears that police officers believe that the encounter has a greater impact on drivers’ views than the drivers report themselves. This study has important implications for policing as it demonstrates that incorporating procedural justice within police-citizen interactions affects police officers as well as the citizens. It also highlights the importance of using external (e.g., larger community) measures, in addition to internal measures (e.g., within police organization), when assessing the effectiveness of police organizations to ensure a more complete picture.

Optimising the length of random breath tests: Results from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial

Research suggests that the length and quality of police–citizen encounters affect policing outcomes. The Koper Curve, for example, shows that the optimal length for police presence in hot spots is between 14 and 15 minutes, with diminishing returns observed thereafter. Our study, using data from the Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET), examines the impact of encounter length on citizen perceptions of police performance. QCET involved a randomised field trial, where 60 random breath test (RBT) traffic stop operations were randomly allocated to an experimental condition involving a procedurally just encounter or a business-as-usual control condition. Our results show that the optimal length of time for procedurally just encounters during RBT traffic stops is just less than 2 minutes. We show, therefore, that it is important to encourage and facilitate positive police–citizen encounters during RBT at traffic stops, while ensuring that the length of these interactions does not pass a point of diminishing returns.

Social identity and procedural justice in police encounters with the public: results from a randomised controlled trial

The role of social identity in shaping citizen views of police is central to the group-value model (GVM). The GVM suggests that the relationship between public perceptions of fair treatment and views of police legitimacy will be tempered by social identity. Our paper employs a randomised field trial of procedural justice dialogue – the Queensland Community Engagement Trial – to test the role of social identity in the GVM. Under randomised field trial conditions we find that social identity is connected to perceptions of procedural justice and legitimacy, but that it does not moderate the effect of procedural justice on legitimacy. We discuss the implications of this finding, concluding that when police use procedurally just dialogue in encounters with the public, they can enhance perceptions of police, regardless of social identification.

Reducing Truancy and Fostering a Willingness to Attend School: Results from a Randomized Trial of a Police-School Partnership Program

Truancy is a major social issue that is linked to a range of poor outcomes across the life course, including poor educational outcomes, drug and alcohol abuse, and antisocial behavior. Interventions that seek to reduce truancy problems range from school-based police officers to programs that reward good attendance to community-based interventions. This study reports primary outcome results of a randomized trial of a collaborative, police–school partnership that sought to reduce truancy and increase students’ willingness to attend school. Using school attendance and students’ self-report survey data, we find that the police–school partnership intervention shows promise for reducing truancy and improving students’ willingness to attend school. We conclude that police–school partnerships that foster the willingness of young people to attend school should be examined in future evaluation research and be considered in the development of truancy prevention programs.

Truancy Intervention Reduces Crime: Results from a Randomized Field Trial

Educational attainment is a fundamental cornerstone to success throughout the life-course. As a result, ensuring that young people remain in school and are not truant is critical. Although the importance of truancy as a risk factor for many adverse outcomes, including crime, has been well-documented, much less methodologically rigorous work has been undertaken to evaluate potentially promising prevention and intervention strategies. This paper uses a randomized field trial method to test how a partnership between police and schools targeting truancy impacts offending in a sample of high-risk truanting young people. We find that the truancy intervention reduces offending and we discuss the implications for practice and directions for future research.

Assessing the effect of the Queensland “Summer of Disasters” on perceptions of collective efficacy

The collective efficacy literature suggests that neighborhoods with higher collective efficacy have fewer problems of disorder, increased volunteerism, and higher levels of life satisfaction and wellbeing, along with the increased potential for resilience in the face of a disaster. Although perceptions of collective efficacy typically remain stable over time, rapid or sudden social change, such as experiencing a natural disaster, has the potential to disrupt the neighborhood and the individuals within - including their perceptions of the regulatory mechanisms of collective efficacy. Still, the effect of a major disaster on perceptions of collective efficacy remains relatively unexamined. Longitudinal survey data collected before and after the Queensland flood and cyclone disasters permit a unique investigation of the impact of the disaster on perceptions of social control and social cohesion before and after the disaster. Results show that after this major natural disaster, respondents who were proximately affected reported decreased levels of collective efficacy. Also, persons who experienced the biggest decrease in perceived collective efficacy were those that had lower levels of collective efficacy prior to the disaster. We discuss the mechanisms surrounding disaster preparedness, response, and recovery that may contribute to changing perceptions of collective efficacy.

The Coproduction of Truancy Control: Results from a Randomized Trial of a Police–Schools Partnership Program

Objectives: To evaluate, under randomized field trial conditions, the deterrent effects of a police–school partnership, called the Ability School Engagement Program (ASEP). The partnership sought to co-produce truancy reduction by actively engaging parents and their truanting children in a group conference dialogue that was designed to increase parental and child awareness of the truancy laws (and the consequences of noncompliance), and thereby foster students’ willingness to attend school. Methods: Using a randomized field trial design, 102 truanting young people were randomly allocated to a control, business-as-usual condition (n = 51), or the ASEP experimental condition (n = 51). In this paper, we use mixed model ANOVA and multiple regression analysis of self-report survey data from both students and their parents to assess differences between the experimental and control group on parental perceptions of prosecution likelihood and student willingness to attend school. We use qualitative analysis of the group conference transcripts to examine how the intervention affected these factors. Results: Our results demonstrate that the police–school partnership intervention increased parental awareness of prosecution likelihood, which moderated students’ self-reported willingness to attend school. Conclusions: We conclude that police–school partnerships that engage parents and their children to better understand the laws pertaining to school attendance are a promising approach for co-producing the reduction of truancy.