Procedural Justice as Organizational Legitimation: A Police Perspective
Open AccessProcedural Justice as Organizational Legitimation:A Police PerspectiveThis multiple case study research of three police agencies was designed to explore procedurally just policing (PJP) as an organizational legitimation strategy. The three cases were building legitimacy following a sentinel event or series thereof. While they did not refer to their legitimation strategy as PJP (Quattlebaum et al., 2018), their reform efforts had significant overlap with the four PJP pillars of transparency and public engagement, procedural justice within the organization, officer interactions with their communities, and procedural justice with particular groups. Through triangulated interviews, observations, website analysis, document review, and social media examination, this study focused on the primary research question: What are the multi-level organizational legitimation practices of PJP? It was also designed to explore the following supporting research question: How do police organizations employ these practices of PJP to build legitimacy? While the findings included nearly all of the 41 PJP principles, several themes from outside of the PJP framework emerged as critical to the legitimation efforts of these agencies. For example, competent leadership and supervision, accountability and self-assessment, managing power limits (use of force, de-escalation, and internal affairs), and crime reduction effectiveness were integral to the successful PJP legitimation strategy in all three cases. As such, the findings may benefit police executives seeking to build legitimacy following its loss. This study contributes to the procedural justice (Tyler, 1990) literature, specifically confirming the role of effectiveness (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003) and boundary of authority (Trinkner & Tyler, 2016) in a procedural justice effort. The significance of institutional myths (Crank & Langworthy, 1992) and coercive isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) to reform efforts such as PJP was evident throughout this work. As such, this study highlights the relevance of the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorney general offices to the reform efforts of individual agencies, as well as the institution of policing as a whole. This research also brings to the fore the infinite paradoxical circumstances and state of continuous change in the policing environment. The nexus to leadership development (Day et al., 2014) emerged, as building social capital was essential to navigate the political and social milieu in these agencies. Networked relationships were critical as police leaders navigated paradox such as crime reduction and constitutional policing; political interference and democratic accountability; auditing processes and resource allocation; and disciplinary processes without adequate training, personnel, or facilities. This study, undertaken from a process philosophy lens (Whitehead, 1929/1978; Seibt, 2023), highlights continuous legitimation efforts rather than the achievement of a static state of legitimacy. Key Words: Procedurally just policing, legitimacy, police reform, consent decree, procedural justice, isomorphism, leadership development, process philosophy.
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Lombardo_gwu_0075A_16464.pdf | 2023-11-14 | Open Access |
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