Measuring Procedural Justice in Police-Citizen Encounters
Abstract
Procedural justice has dominated recent discussions of police interactions with the public. It has mostly been measured from the perspective of citizens (using surveys or interviews), but several important questions about predictors and outcomes of fair police treatment are best answered using direct observations of police-citizen interactions. Building on prior observational studies, we develop and validate an instrument for measuring procedural justice as it is exercised by the police in the natural setting of their encounters with the public. In doing so, we adopt a “formative” rather than the common “reflective” approach, based on the assumption that specific behaviors that make up procedural justice do not reflect a single underlying construct but rather form one. We justify this approach and validate our instrument accordingly. We also discuss the implications of our measurement for future research on procedural justice in police behavior.
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The indices were drawn from a prior SSO study that identified formative indices of PJ.
“These indices were drawn from a prior SSO study that identified formative indices of PJ (26).”
From Reforming the police through procedural justice training: A multicity randomized trial at crime hot spots (2022) · cites this paper as [26]
Jonathan-Zamir et al. 2015 expressly built indicators of procedural justice into its coding instrument.
“one recent study (Jonathan-Zamir et al. 2015) expressly built indicators of procedural justice into its coding instrument.”
From Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy (2017) · cites this paper as Jonathan-Zamir et al. 2015
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Procedural Justice and Legal Compliance
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“These indices were drawn from a prior SSO study that identified formative indices of PJ (26).”
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- Authors
- Jonathan-Zamir, T., Mastrofski, S. D., & Moyal, S.
- Affiliations
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- George Mason University (US)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Jonathan-Zamir, Tal
- ORCID
- Jonathan-Zamir, Tal
- Venue
- Justice Quarterly
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2013-10-29
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 845-871
- ISSN
- 0741-8825 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-9109
- OpenAlex
- W2035119545
- Semantic Scholar
- 691ddc816c66c61147aee44e75aad17e19976180
- Cited by
- 189
- References
- 74
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 49.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Justice Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- George Mason University
- US-UK Fulbright Commission
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Keywords
- procedural justice, police-citizen encounters, police behavior, scale development, formative measurement, reflective measurement, police legitimacy, observational assessment
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