This study aims to examine residents’ attitude toward the police, with an empirical assessment of survey data collected from both urban and rural areas of Taiwan, a Chinese society that has successfully transformed from authoritarianism to democracy. Prior studies using samples from different Chinese societies tend to find that the assessment of the police is unidimensional. Using procedural justice as the guiding theoretical framework, the present study examines whether urban and rural residents express different levels of trust in police on procedural- and outcome-based measures. Findings revealed that urban residents had a lower level of trust in police on the outcome-based performance than their rural counterparts, while no difference was found in procedural-based dimension. In addition, Taiwanese attitudes toward the police were substantially influenced by media coverage of police misconducts and political ideology. This article concluded with discussions of plausible explanations and policy implications.

PurposeThis paper aims to assess whether internal procedural justice is directly and indirectly through self-legitimacy connected to external procedural justice among Taiwanese police officers.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data used in this study were collected from 316 Taiwanese police officers in 2019. Structural equation modeling was performed to examine the direct and indirect relationships between internal and external procedural justice.FindingsSupervisors' internal procedural justice is directly related to the external procedural justice rendered to the public by police officers. Internal procedural justice also directly enhances officers' perceptions of internal legitimacy and external legitimacy. Greater senses of internal legitimacy are then accompanied by higher external procedural justice.Research limitations/implicationsSurvey data collected from a non-random sample of officers limit the study findings' generalizability. Organizational justice in the form of supervisory justice is instrumental in promoting officers' perception of self-legitimacy and their delivery of fair treatment to the public.Originality/valueThe present study represents a first attempt to link two important veins of studies in recent policing literature, organizational justice and officer self-legitimacy. This study provides needed evidence to support the value of supervisory justice in policing in a non-Western democracy.

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The procedural justice model of policing has gained much popularity in scholarship and empirical support in democracies, yet research on the procedural justice within police organizations, particularly the mediating mechanisms connecting internal procedural justice and officer behavioral tendencies, is rather limited. With an aid of survey data collected from Taiwanese police officers, this study tests the connections between internal procedural justice and officers’ compliance with agency rules and cooperation with supervisors via an essential element—trust in supervisors. Internal procedural justice was found to be directly related to trust in supervisors and officer cooperation with supervisor, whereas the association between internal procedural justice and compliance with agency rules is mainly indirect through trust in supervisors. This study concludes with discussing research and pragmatic implications of findings.