Turning defiance into compliance with procedural justice: Understanding reactions to regulatory encounters through motivational posturing

This paper uses Braithwaite's motivational posturing framework to explain how individuals react to encounters with regulatory authorities. Of interest is whether procedural justice can reduce defiance and improve self‐reported compliance among individuals who are either resistant or dismissive of regulatory authority. Using longitudinal survey data collected from tax offenders (Study 1), and individuals who had a recent police‐citizen interaction (Study 2), it will be shown that procedural justice can promote compliance behavior. Procedural justice is also found to be effective for reducing resistant forms of defiance over time, but not dismissive defiance. Further, the results reveal that neither resistant defiance nor dismissive defiance moderate the effect of procedural justice on compliance, suggesting procedural justice works equally well for both low and high resisters and low and high disengagers. Finally, an unexpected result reveals that resistance, but not dismissive defiance, mediates the effect of procedural justice on self‐reported compliance behavior. The findings have implications for procedural justice research and for the regulation of defiance.     

Desistance and Legitimacy: The Impact of Offender Notification Meetings on Recidivism among High Risk Offenders

Legitimacy-based approaches to crime prevention assume that individuals will comply with the law when they believe that the law and its agents are legitimate and act in ways that are “fair” and “just.” Currently, legitimacy-based programs are shown to lower aggregate levels of crime; yet, no study has investigated whether such programs influence individual offending. Using quasi-experimental design and survival analyses, this study evaluates the effectiveness of one such program—Chicago’s Project Safe Neighborhoods’ (PSN) Offender Notification Forums—at reducing individual recidivism among a population of returning prisoners. Results suggest that involvement in PSN significantly reduces the risk of subsequent incarceration and is associated with significantly longer intervals that offenders remain on the street and out of prison. As the first study to provide individual-level evidence promoting legitimacy-based interventions on patterns of individual offending, out study suggests these interventions can and do reduce rates of recidivism.     

Communication in family court: financial remedy proceedings from the perspective of litigants in person

The article presents a rationale for communicative, conceptual, cognitive and procedural challenges experienced by litigants in person in financial remedy proceedings. The article also explores oscillation between written and spoken legal genres and narrative development strategies which litigants in person have to use throughout different stages (from the early stages of starting proceedings, filling in court forms and providing documentation, through the negotiation process to interaction in court). While legal professionals express themselves in paradigmatic legal mode influenced by legal acts and legislation, litigants in person tend to express themselves in narrative mode similar to everyday storytelling. The objective is to investigate obstacles litigants in person experience during the process originally designed by legal professionals for legal professionals. The article evaluates different options for empowering lay people involved in legal proceedings and argues for the need to provide more specific support for different stages of family proceedings.     

Students and the police in Ghana: mixed feelings

This study examines university students’ perceptions of the Ghana police service in contrast with general population studies that explain citizens’ attitudes toward the police. Two research questions guided this study: (1) What are university students’ perceptions of the police? and (2) What factors influence university students’ perceptions of the police? Using data collected from one large university in Ghana between the months of December 2012 and February 2013, the study found several intriguing findings. First, students have moderate trust in the Ghana police. Second, students critically evaluated police procedural fairness and effectiveness. Multivariate regression models revealed that vicarious experiences of police corruption, marital status, level of education, and ethnicity predicted students’ trust in the police as well as influenced their perceptions of fairness and effectiveness. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

论民事裁判的实体公正

近年来,我国法学界和司法工作者在纠正“重实体、轻程序”现象的同时,产生了过分强调程序公正的倾向,并导致司法裁判不公现象的增多。从实证的角度看．程序公正是实体公正的基础和前提．实体公正是程序公正的依归和检验标准,二者相互依存、相互促进。程序公正与实体公正是一致的,但有时也会产生冲突,这时,法官就要根据价值衡量来决定取舍,不能简单地一律程序公正优先．也不能把实体公正作为惟一的追求。从我国的实际情况出发,在民事诉讼实务中要实现裁判的实体公正,必须在民事裁判结果中体现法律和情理的统一。以取得裁判法律效果和社会效果的统一。实现法律公正与社会主流正义观的统一。     

民事程序选择权的法理基础

程序选择权是以尊重主体人格尊严以及多元化需求为基础的一项公民的基本程序权利。从民事程序选择权的概念和性质出发,民事程序选择权的法理基础可以界定为:人权内涵的体现、程序主体性原则的应有之义、处分权主义的必然结果。同时,民事程序选择权在保障程序公正、提升程序效率等方面对民事诉讼及民事纠纷的解决有着不可忽视的作用。     

Promoting Muslims’ Willingness to Report Terror Threats to Police: Testing Competing Theories of Procedural Justice

The heightened threat of terrorism in the West has resulted in more power being granted to police. However, new anti-terror laws and heavy-handed policing practices can stigmatize Muslim communities. Using survey data from 800 Australian Muslims this paper examines whether procedural justice policing in counter-terrorism enhances Muslims’ feelings of social inclusion, and promotes their intentions to report terror threats to police. Of interest is how procedural justice influences Muslims who feel less socially included. Three competing theoretical frameworks differ in the predictions they make about when and why procedural justice influences excluded groups. This paper considers each framework and discusses how each explains the relationships between our variables of interest. Our findings show that procedural justice is positively associated with social inclusion and intentions to report terror threats to police. Findings also show that social inclusion both moderates and partially mediates the effect of procedural justice on reporting intentions.     

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

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 understudied. 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 towards 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.