Recovering Police Legitimacy

Transatlantic policing is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy, epitomised by public responses to the murders of George Floyd and Sarah Everard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Legitimacy is lost when the police either fail to protect the public or rely on coercion rather than consent to achieve that protection. Recovering Police Legitimacy challenges conventional criminological, political, and public solutions to the problem by approaching it from the bottom up, beginning with policing as a practice constituted by a unique set of excellences, skills, and characteristics. The author draws on his experience as a police officer and on the serial fictions of James Ellroy, David Peace, and Nic Pizzolatto to characterise the practice in terms of heroic struggle, edgework, absolute sacrifice, and worldmaking. These characteristics provide an analytic tool for revolutionising our understanding of the relations among policing as a situated practice, public protection, and police legitimacy and for identifying the different levels at which legitimacy is undermined. His conclusion is that recovery is possible but will be slow in pace and incomplete in scope. Written accessibly for students, police officers, policymakers, scholars, and anyone with an interest in police legitimacy, this is a groundbreaking study of a pressing social problem.

Developments and problems associated with police power are at the very front of current public debate. This volume addresses contemporary issues of policing with a focus on the characteristics of police power as a coercive force in society and its continued need for legitimacy in a democratic social order.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the United States, the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the public would better trust the police and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seemingly offers a relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform is, in fact, illusory.

This is a case study of suburban community police officers and their perception of benefits of higher education as it relates to outcomes of procedural justice and legitimacy. Acknowledging controversial, high-profile incidents which have caused the police profession to be generalized in a negative manner, this study sought to examine community-policing initiatives as an effective strategy for promoting positive community-police relationships. Community police officers were queried about academic and professional preparation they perceived as necessary for the demands of the 21st century community police officer. Previous literature on community policing and procedurally just policing has primarily focused on the perceptions of the public. This study hoped to contribute to the literature as the authentic police officer voice. Analysis of the data revealed several themes and found that a redefined model of community policing is a promising answer to restoring trust between the community and the police. This new model shall be referred to as the Procedurally Just Community-Policing Model and concludes that when intentional community-policing efforts are intertwined with procedurally just policing practice, trust is maximized, therefore resulting in legitimacy.

This Element presents the history, research, and future potential for an alternative and effective model of policing called 'legitimacy-based policing'. This model is driven by social psychology theory and informed by research findings showing that legitimacy of the police shapes public acceptance of police decisions, willingness to cooperate with the police, and citizen engagement in communities. Police legitimacy is found to be strongly tied to the level of fairness exercised by police authority, i.e. to procedural justice. Taken together these two ideas create an alternative framework for policing that relies upon the policed community's willing acceptance of and cooperation with the law. Studies show that this framework is as effective in lowering crime as the traditional carceral paradigm, an approach that relies on the threat or use of force to motivate compliance. It is also more effective in motivating willing cooperation and in encouraging people to engage in their communities in ways that promote social, economic and political development. We demonstrate that adopting this model benefits police departments and police officers as well as promoting community vitality. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Just Authority? provides the most authoritative and comprehensive analysis thus far of the meaning, distribution and significance of trust in the police and the legitimacy of legal authorities. Drawing on psychological and sociological explanatory paradigms, Just Authority? presents a cutting-edge empirical study into public trust, police legitimacy, and people's readiness to cooperate with officers. It represents, first, the most detailed test to date of Tom Tyler's procedural justice model attempted outside the United States. Second, it uncovers the social ecology of trust and legitimacy and, third, it describes the relationships between trust, legitimacy and cooperation.This book contains many important lessons for practitioners, policy-makers and academics.

Designed for the public-at-large, but specifically law enforcement professionals, in the terminal performance objective and four supporting enabling objectives, you will receive with candid and timely information for mastering day-to-day law enforcement duties consistent with the demand for criminal justice reform. When you apply the learning objectives into real-time practice, you will not only be able to take the most decisive action to address the sources of crime consistent with the rules of law, but transforming your own behavior and performance as a peace officer with competent character.

Justice and Legitimacy in Policing critically analyzes the state of American policing and evaluates proposed solutions to reform/transform the institution, such as implementing body-worn cameras, increasing diversity in police agencies, the problem of crimmigration, limiting qualified immunity, and the abolitionist movement. Considering the changes that have occurred in our sociopolitical climate, policymakers, scholars, and the public are in need of a book that focuses on the American policing institution in a comprehensive yet critical manner. Each chapter is devoted to a specific area of policing that has either received criticism for the problems it may create or has been proposed to effect reform. The chapters are sequenced such that readers are introduced to a spectrum of topics to expand the discourse on changes needed to achieve equitable policing. The book also encourages readers to consider the idea that achieving justice and legitimacy in policing cannot happen as the institution is now formulated, and it invites readers to use the topics discussed in each chapter to envision transformative propositions. Justice and Legitimacy in Policing is intended to engage policymakers and practitioners as well as interested members of the public. The scope of this book also makes it a valuable resource for academics and students.

This brief focuses on the “doing” of procedural justice: what the police can do to implement the principles of procedural justice, and how their actions can improve citizen perceptions of police legitimacy. Drawing on research from Australia (Mazerolle et al), the UK (Stanko, Bradford, Jackson etc al), the US (Tyler, Reisig, Weisburd), Israel (Jonathon-Zamir et al), Trinidad & Tobago (Kochel et al) and Ghana (Tankebe), the authors examine the practical ways that the police can approach engagement with citizens across a range of different types of interventions to embrace the principles of procedural justice, including: · problem-oriented policing · patrol · restorative justice · reassurance policing · and community policing. Through these examples, the authors also examine some of the barriers for implementing procedurally just ways of interacting with citizens, and offer practical suggestions for reform. This work will be of interest for researchers in criminology and criminal justice focused on policing as well as policymakers.

Cooper answers two questions: why do police precincts look similar, despite being situated in very different environments? And, why do police engage in behavior that does not result in crime control? These two questions are closely related. Drawing from institutional theory and employing spatial analytic techniques, Cooper finds that certain police precincts unduly influence the behavior of neighboring precincts. In the language of institutional theory, this is sovereign isomorphism: precincts behave similarly because they see other precincts as leaders. Such isomorphism results in behavior that does not reduce crime because the borrowed behavior has no connection with the precinct¿s immediate environment. These findings hold great potential for inducing organizational change by tapping into the strategic power of such sovereign precincts.