Using a police community survey to determine procedural justice measures of police legitimacy.

摘要

This study addresses the problem of police agencies using deficient measures in demonstrating examples of performance such as crime and clearance rates. Accurate measures are important to police customers for reasons of trust in their police agency and to police managers for organizational development. The purpose of this study was to provide academic research on a more valid measure of police performance. The research questions focused on the relationship between measures of police use of procedural justice (ethicality, honesty, and fairness) with citizen satisfaction levels, levels of citizen contact, and police patrol section. This study is based on Tyler's theory of procedural justice and authority legitimacy. A non-experimental quantitative research methodology was used. Fifteen hundred surveys were distributed by mail to individuals who had differing levels of contact with a local police department. The relationship between procedural justice and reported satisfaction levels was tested using Pearson product moment correlations. One-way factorial multivariate analysis of variance was used to compare procedural justice among groups of individuals having differing levels of contact with the police department and the patrol sections. Results indicated strong and positive correlations between measures of procedural justice and measure of satisfaction. Satisfaction with task and satisfaction with image were correlated respectively with ethicality, honesty of police officers, honesty of police department, individual fairness, and community fairness. The results of this study could help police managers to develop performance measurement practices that could increase the effectiveness of police organizations nationwide, increasing the prospect of enacting positive social change.