“It Depends on the Outcome”: Prisoners, Grievances, and Perceptions of Justice

Abstract

Social scientists have long investigated the social, cultural, and psychological forces that shape perceptions of fairness. A vast literature on procedural justice advances a central finding: the process by which a dispute is played out is central to people's perceptions of fairness and their satisfaction with dispute outcomes. There is, however, one glaring gap in the literature. In this era of mass incarceration, studies of how the incarcerated weigh procedural justice versus substantive justice are rare. This article addresses this gap by drawing on unique quantitative and qualitative data, including face‐to‐face interviews with a random sample of men incarcerated in three California prisons and official data provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Our mixed‐methods analysis reveals that these prisoners privilege the actual outcomes of disputes as their barometer of justice. We argue that the dominance of substantive outcomes in these men's perceptions of fairness and in their dispute satisfaction is grounded in, among other things, the high stakes of the prison context, an argument that is confirmed by our data. These findings do not refute the importance of procedural justice, but show the power of institutional context to structure perceptions of and responses to fairness, one of the most fundamental principles of social life.

Race, Grievance Systems, and Prisoners’ Perceptions of Justice in Three California Prisons

“…In contrast to findings of many procedural justice studies, in our earlier work the relative presence of the three procedural measures-whether there was a hearing, whether the grievant was interviewed, and whether he was notified of the outcome-was not statistically significantly associated with prisoners' satisfaction with the outcome(s) of their grievance(s) (Jenness and Calavita, 2018). Also in contradiction to a central tenet advanced in procedural justice theory, whether the grievance was granted (i.e., the actual outcome) is significantly associated with prisoners' satisfaction (Jenness and Calavita, 2018). In other words, we found that outcomes matter significantly in determining California prisoners' satisfaction, while specific indicators of procedure do not (Jenness and Calavita, 2018).…”

“…Also in contradiction to a central tenet advanced in procedural justice theory, whether the grievance was granted (i.e., the actual outcome) is significantly associated with prisoners' satisfaction (Jenness and Calavita, 2018). In other words, we found that outcomes matter significantly in determining California prisoners' satisfaction, while specific indicators of procedure do not (Jenness and Calavita, 2018).…”

“…This article and our other work (Jenness and Calavita, 2018) report that, in contrast to much of the procedural justice literature, for California prisoners the outcome of a grievance-not its procedural elements-is the more important ingredient in their satisfaction and in their perception that it had been fairly managed. With rare exceptions (see, for example, recent work by Baker et al, 2015), the procedural justice literature has been relatively silent on the question of race differences.…”

Speaking of Justice: A Qualitative Interview Study on Perceived Procedural Justice Among Defendants in Dutch Criminal Cases

“…Related to this issue of generalizability, our response rate was acceptable but suboptimal and lower than the response rate obtained in, for example, the study by Jenness and Calavita (2018). Therefore, we cannot rule out nonresponse bias.…”

“…Such studies are relatively scarce, although their importance has been mentioned several times (e.g., Holtfreter 2016;Tyler 2014). Exceptions include the studies by De Mesmaecker (2014), Haller and Machura (1995), Jenness and Calavita (2018), Morgan (2018), and Swaner et al (2018). Rather than starting with questions about predetermined procedural justice components, these researchers often allowed respondents to identify procedural justice components on their own first and then asked questions about predetermined components of procedural justice.…”