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In their own eyes: an empirical examination of police self-legitimacy

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Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Abstract

Legitimacy is at the heart of the functioning of criminal justice systems. In their paper Beyond Procedural Justice, Bottoms and Tankebe specified two interrelated dimensions of legitimacy: audience legitimacy and self-legitimacy. Criminologists have given considerable attention to audience legitimacy, but police officers’ belief in their own legitimacy remains under-studied. This paper extends Bottoms and Tankebe’s theory and reports findings on some of its key propositions, using survey data from a UK police force. Three key findings emerge. First, contrary to previous studies, feelings of recognition by supervisors and clientele did not predict self-legitimacy; self-legitimacy was found to depend on feelings of peer recognition and acceptance. Second, self-legitimacy predicted officers’ commitment to external procedural justice but not their moral orientations toward crime victims. Finally, perceived police effectiveness but not supervisor recognition – that is, internal procedural justice – was the key predictor both of external procedural justice and of normative orientations towards crime victims. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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Keywords

Self-legitimacy, legitimacy, external procedural justice, police effectiveness, organisational justice, recognition triad

Journal Title

International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0192-4036
2157-6475

Volume Title

43

Publisher

Informa UK Limited