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Objectives : Judgments about police procedural fairness consistently have a stronger influence on how the public ascribes legitimacy to the police than evaluations of police effectiveness. What remains largely underexplored, however, is the potential moderating effect of procedural justice on the relationship between effectiveness and legitimacy and whether this moderation varies by citizen race. Method: We administered two separate surveys to determine whether procedural justice's moderating effect on the relationship between police ineffectiveness and legitimacy varies by citizen race. The first was a mail survey of a random sample of citizens in a southern US city (N = 1,681) conducted in 2013; the second, a national survey of adults (N = 972) administered via Qualtrics in 2022. Results: We found that procedural justice could help protect against the harmful influence of perceived ineffectiveness on police legitimacy in Study 2. However, contrary to expectations, this moderation effect held only for White Americans. Conclusions: The effect of perceived ineffectiveness on legitimacy evaluations does not vary depending on citizens' perceptions of procedural justice. Yet, police still do have control over how they treat people with whom they interact, which is one mechanism that can improve citizens' views on police legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additionally, it assumes that each of those behaviors is equally weighted in forming that judgment so that the presence of one behavior is ascribed the same meaning by the actor as any of the other behaviors in the index. Keywords: objective procedural justice; subjective procedural justice; police; measurement EN objective procedural justice subjective procedural justice police measurement 378 392 15 03/24/23 20230501 NES 230501 Introduction I commend [12] for heeding repeated calls ([8]; [17]) for more field work testing procedural justice theory (PJT). Their critique is grounded in the idea that procedural justice scholars have (1) identified the process by which actors transform interactions with police officers into subjective judgments of procedural justice and (2) developed measures to capture this process. If there are a nearly infinite number of behaviors that could be selected in constructing an objective measure of procedural justice, then this suggests PJT (or at least a core aspect of it) is functionally unfalsifiable as one could always argue that any nonsignificant relation between objective and subjective measures is due to the former not containing the "correct" behaviors. [Extracted from the article]

Objectives: A body of literature has demonstrated that the perceived legitimacy of legal authorities is an important predictor of criminal offending. Criminal offending is itself age-graded and good explanations of offending should offer some insight for how it changes as individuals age. This article attempts to address this gap by developing and testing seven hypotheses regarding how legitimacy changes over time. Method: Using panel data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a latent growth model (LGM) for legitimacy examines how evaluations of legitimacy change from adolescence to emerging adulthood as well as what factors influence this change. Results: During the period individuals were involved in the study, the LGM revealed that perceptions of legitimacy increase as individuals progress through adolescence before stabilizing in emerging adulthood. Several theoretical factors were related to individuals' legitimacy evaluations including parental evaluations of legitimacy, family support, emotionality, and self-control. Most importantly, perceptions of procedural justice were found to be related to legitimacy, but this relationship weakened as individuals aged. Conclusions: Evaluations of the legitimacy of legal authorities are, in fact, age-graded. Criminologists should continue to explore the sources of legitimacy evaluations in further developing legitimacy as an important theory of criminal behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study evaluates the malleability of judgments of procedural justice. Drawing upon various literatures, five factors are hypothesized to be related to changes in procedural justice: (1) prior judgments of procedural justice, (2) direct experiences of arrest, (3) vicarious experiences of arrest, (4) individual arrest history, and (5) age. Methods: Using 11 waves of data from the Pathways to Desistance Study (N = 1,354), multilevel models relate within-person covariates including individual, family, and peer arrests, and age to changes in procedural justice, controlling for stable, individual characteristics. Results: Judgments of procedural justice are anchored in prior perceptions. They are also a function of direct and vicarious experiences of arrests with the effect of individual arrests varying across individual arrest history. Evidence also suggests a developmental component. Age has a direct effect on judgments of procedural justice and conditions the effect of individual arrests on changes in procedural justice. Conclusions: Judgments of procedural justice are not static. Given these results, future research should continue to investigate the varying effects of other interactions with legal authorities on changes in judgments of procedural justice in order to form stronger policies aimed at increasing citizen cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]