Updating Perceptions of (In)Justice

Abstract

Objectives: This study evaluates the malleability of judgments of procedural justice. Drawing upon various literatures, five factors are hypothesized to be related to changes in procedural justice: (1) prior judgments of procedural justice, (2) direct experiences of arrest, (3) vicarious experiences of arrest, (4) individual arrest history, and (5) age. Methods: Using 11 waves of data from the Pathways to Desistance Study (N = 1,354), multilevel models relate within-person covariates including individual, family, and peer arrests, and age to changes in procedural justice, controlling for stable, individual characteristics. Results: Judgments of procedural justice are anchored in prior perceptions. They are also a function of direct and vicarious experiences of arrests with the effect of individual arrests varying across individual arrest history. Evidence also suggests a developmental component. Age has a direct effect on judgments of procedural justice and conditions the effect of individual arrests on changes in procedural justice. Conclusions: Judgments of procedural justice are not static. Given these results, future research should continue to investigate the varying effects of other interactions with legal authorities on changes in judgments of procedural justice in order to form stronger policies aimed at increasing citizen cooperation.

Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

“…But they also acknowledge that the stability in the differences "suggests that inter-individual differences among study participants in their cynicism about the legal system likely were established before their first assessment in this study, perhaps as young as fifteen years of age" (287), and the same could be said about their judgments about legitimacy. Megan Augustyn (2015) examined the same sample over a longer time period, finding a decline in offenders' procedural justice judgments, much as Amie Schuck (2013) did, and also that later judgments were influenced by prior judgments. She also found that, curiously, arrests improved offenders' perceptions of procedural justice, and that the positive effect of an arrest increased as offenders aged.…”

Evaluating the shared and unique predictors of legal cynicism and police legitimacy from adolescence into early adulthood

“…Kaiser and Reisig (), for example, found that individual characteristics such as impulse control, moral disengagement, and emotional regulation were more strongly related to between‐ and within‐individual variation in legal cynicism than to legitimacy. Similarly, some scholars have found a stronger associations between legal cynicism and self‐reported offending compared with measures of police legitimacy (see Augustyn, ; Fagan & Piquero, ; Reisig et al., ; but see Kaiser & Reisig, ; Trinkner et al., ).…”

Examining the Impact of the Freddie Gray Unrest on Perceptions of the Police

“…In applications of learning theories and legal socialization, scholars have shown that other factors such as the accumulation of experiences also inform views about law enforcement as well as about procedural justice (Brunson and Weitzer, ; Rosenbaum et al., ; Weitzer and Tuch, ). People's views of the police are formed through socialization with family, friends, and the community, but as individuals have new encounters with the police, as well as vicarious experiences, their perceptions are “updated”—“as an individual comes into contact with new information, they update their prior judgement” (Augustyn, : 259). Weitzer () argued that how an individual is treated during contact with a police officer is a micro‐level process and is only one aspect that influences people's perceptions of law enforcement.…”