Studies on police legitimacy, particularly from the developed western societies have shown that compliance with the law is primarily shaped by feelings that laws and legal authorities are legitimate and should be obeyed. However, we are unsure whether such findings would be consistent if tested among university students in a transitional society like South Africa where police-students relationship is driven by conflict, and where police misconduct is relatively high. That is, do university students comply with the law in South Africa because they perceived the police as legitimate or due to feelings of pervasive helplessness or what scholars refer to as 'dull compulsion". This article explores the exact factor that shapes compliance with the law among South African university students. Findings indicate that police effectiveness, predatory policing and experience of police abuse predicted voluntary compliance with the law among university students. Additionally,

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This study explores the impacts of procedural justice on incarcerated offenders’ obligation to obey, and compliance with correctional rules and procedures in selected South African correctional centers. The Tylerian process-based regulation model holds that compliance with legal authorities is contingent upon some normative and instrumental factors. While these factors have been considered to shape compliance among inmates in correctional centers in Western societies, there is a dearth of research on compliance behavior among incarcerated offenders in correctional centers in transitional African societies, including South Africa. A cross-sectional survey of participants from selected correctional centers in South Africa assessed the effect of procedural justice and other exogenous elements on inmates’ obligation to obey and comply with correctional rules and procedures. The findings indicate, among others, that inmates who assessed correctional officials as procedurally just or fair were more likely to obey and comply with correctional rules and procedures. The implications of the findings for the effective management of incarcerated offenders are discussed.

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