Procedural Justice and Order Maintenance Policing: A Study of Inner‐City Young Men’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

TLDR

Procedural justice principles conflict with order‑maintenance policing, which relies on frequent stops for minor offenses that citizens often view as harassment, thereby threatening perceptions of police legitimacy. The study investigates how inner‑city young men describe their experiences with proactive policing. Results show that order‑maintenance policing harms police legitimacy and crime‑control efforts by eroding citizens’ trust in procedural justice.

Abstract

There is tension between the core tenets of procedural justice and those of order maintenance policing. Research has shown that citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice influence their beliefs about police legitimacy, yet at the same time, some order maintenance policing efforts stress frequent stops of vehicles and persons for suspected disorderly behavior. These types of programs can threaten citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy because the targeted offenses are minor and are often not well‐defined. Citizens stopped for low‐level offenses may view such stops as a form of harassment, as they may not believe they were doing anything to warrant police scrutiny. This paper examines young men’s self‐described experiences with this style of proactive policing. Study findings highlight that order maintenance policing strategies have negative implications for police legitimacy and crime control efforts via their potential to damage citizens’ views of procedural justice.