Re-Thinking Procedural Justice Theory Through Stop and Search: Shame, Anger, and Police Legitimacy

Abstract

Stop and search has been argued to have a damaging impact upon trust in police and compliance with the law. Procedural Justice Theory has sought to explain this relation through perceptions of (un)fairness leading to the production of (il)legitimacy and to dispositions to (dis)obey. The article proposes a theoretical framework to supplement an explanatory gap in this theory, namely why perceptions of unfairness might lead to anti-police dispositions or attitudes. Ethnographic research is employed to elucidate the relevance of affective, emotional, and cognitive mechanisms in relation to the practice of stop and search. The article argues that the normative representation of the suspect by police and the disempowerment or removal of the subject’s agency at the hands of police contain the capacity to reveal a disparity between self-understanding and social recognition: the central affective condition for shame. Transformations of this affective experience into anger defend self-esteem by positioning the police as at fault, questioning the claim to authority, and simultaneously constructing the expressive drive to mistrust and confront the goal-obstacle to self-esteem.