Abstract
Objectives
Drawing on Agnew’s (2006) general strain theory, this study tested the direct effects of police procedural injustice on participants’ emotionality and behavioral coping intentions. The mediating effects of emotionality were also assessed.
Methods
Data come from factorial vignettes depicting citizen-initiated encounters that were administered to a university-based sample in 2018 (N = 525). The procedural injustice stimuli reflected police behavior that violated the principles of procedural justice. Four emotional responses—angry, disgusted, happy, and appreciative—were assessed, and behavioral coping intentions were operationalized using two measures: immediate compliance with police directives and willingness to call the police in the future.
Results
Procedural injustice was directly associated with participants’ emotionality and their behavioral coping intentions. The relationships between procedural injustice and behavioral coping intentions were partially mediated by emotionality.
Conclusions
These findings underscore the negative consequences of procedural injustice during citizen-initiated police encounters.
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Notes
Narrative checks were administered to help ensure that participants read the vignettes. Participants were posed a close-ended question asking them to identify the reason for calling the police in the hypothetical scenario. There were three response options (i.e., loud party, car accident, and potential stalker). A small number of participants answered the question incorrectly (n = 4). These individuals were removed from the sample.
These data were used previously in an article that focused on the effects of procedural injustice on police legitimacy at its constituent parts, and whether procedural injustice effects were invariant across officer gender (see Brown & Reisig, 2019). This prior work also assessed data quality. The results from the balance tests indicated no meaningful differences across experimental conditions in terms of gender, age, and race/ethnicity. Additionally, the manipulation checks showed that participants who were administered the procedural injustice stimulus rated the police officer in the scenario less favorably in terms of participation, dignity and respect, neutrality, and trustworthy motives. Accordingly, it was concluded that the stimulus worked as expected.
A very small portion of participants reported experiencing both positive and negative emotions after reading the scenario. The breakdown was as follows: 2.37% (n = 12) of the sample reported to be angry and appreciative, 0.20% (n = 1) of individuals noted they were both angry and happy, 0.59% (n = 3) of participants said they were disgusted and appreciative, and 0.59% (n = 3) of the sample said they were angry and happy. It was comparatively more common for participants to experience combinations of similar (e.g., positive) emotions: 7.10% (n = 36) indicated they were both happy and appreciative, and 22.49% (n = 114) of the sample said they were angry and disgusted.
Similar survey items have been used previously to construct obligation to obey the police scales, which are often included in multidimensional police legitimacy scales. However, such scales have been the subject of growing criticism on both methodological and theoretical grounds (see, e.g., Pósch et al., 2021; Tankebe, 2013). Nevertheless, in the context of police encounters, this measure adequately captures the nature of immediate compliance with police directives.
To help ensure that the observed findings were not merely a product of the selected data-analytic modeling strategy, the regression models in Tables 3 and 4 were re-estimated using ordinary least-square (OLS) regression. In terms of the directional sign of the relationship and statistical significance, the parameter estimates from the ordinal logistic and OLS regression models closely approximated one another. Additionally, the results from the Sobel tests were also highly similar. This evidence led to the conclusion that the findings from the ordinal logistic regression models were not overly sensitive to the modeling strategy that was selected.
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Appendix
Appendix
Potential Stalking Incident
You’ve noticed recently that somebody is following you while walking to class. You’ve also been receiving anonymous text messages. Today, you see that the person who has been following you keeps walking by where you live. You call the police. When the officer arrives you ask (her or him) to make the person leave. (She or He) responds, [“They sure seem to be hanging around. But legally I can’t make them leave because they’re in a public space. To be safe, be sure you lock the door after you go back inside.” (Control Condition)] [“I can’t do that because unless you are blind as a bat you can see they’re just walking on the sidewalk, and that’s a public space. Why don’t you just lock your door?” (Experimental Condition)] You tell the officer that you would like to file a report in case this person continues to follow you. [“Alright, I can do that,” (she or he) says, “It’s good to document things.” (Control Condition)] [Fine,” (she or he) says, “but keep it short, I have real police work to do.” (Experimental Condition)]. After taking notes for a few minutes the officer says, [“Okay, that covers it. I will file this report. If this continues and you feel threatened in anyway, call us immediately.” (Control Condition)] [”This is a waste of time. What do you expect us to do with this?” (Experimental Condition)]. The officer walks back to (her or his) car and leaves.
Hit and Run Incident
While walking to class you witness a silver car hit a parked vehicle. There is clear damage to both vehicles, but the driver of the silver car takes off. You call the police and minutes later a patrol car arrives. The officer walks over to you and (she or he) says, [“Hi, I assume you called about the hit-and-run?” (Control Condition)] [“Could you have picked a more inconvenient spot to wait for me? (Experimental Condition)] So, who’s hurt?” You respond, “Nobody is injured.” (She or He) says, “Let me get this straight, [there was a vehicle that hit another car and drove away? Can you please describe what happened?” (Control Condition)][I busted my ass getting over here and nobody’s hurt? There’s nothing but a scratch. How do you know that wasn’t already there?” (Experimental Condition)]. You start providing (her or him) with details on what happened and about the vehicle that did it. You tell (her or him) you tried to approach the vehicle but it left too fast. (She or He) responds, [“Thank you for reporting this. I’ll file this in case the vehicle owner calls the station later and we’ll keep an eye out for the vehicle you described. Have a good day.” (Control Condition)][“I’ll put this on file in case the owner of the car calls to whine about the scratch. Next time, call us when something important happens” (Experimental Condition)]. The officer walks back to (her or his) car and leaves.
Source: Brown and Reisig (2019: p. 14).
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Brown, K.L., Walker, D. & Reisig, M.D. The effects of procedural injustice and emotionality during citizen-initiated police encounters. J Exp Criminol 20, 61–81 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-022-09526-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-022-09526-w