Is It the What or the How? The Roles of High‐Policing Tactics and Procedural Justice in Predicting Perceptions of Hostile Treatment: The Case of Security Checks at Ben‐Gurion Airport,Israel

What affects perceptions of hostile treatment by police, characterized by feelings such as humiliation and intimidation? Is it what the police do to the citizen, or is it about how they do it? The important effects of procedural justice are well documented in the policing literature. Yet, it is not clear how high‐policing tactics, coupled with procedural justice, affect one's sense of hostile treatment: is it the case that what the police do does not matter as long as they follow the principles of procedural justice, or do some invasive or unpleasant tactics produce negative emotions regardless of the amount of procedural justice displayed by the officer? In the present study we examine this question in the context of security checks at Ben‐Gurion Airport, Israel. Using a survey of 1,970 passengers, we find that the behavioral elements of procedural justice are an important antidote, mitigating the negative effects of four “extra” screening measures on the perceived hostility of the checks. At the same time, two security measures retain an independent and significant effect. We discuss the implications of our findings and hypothesize about the characteristics of policing practices that are less sensitive to procedural justice.     

On terror, drugs and racial profiling

We show that for racial profiling (defined as policy rules that employ statistical discrimination based on racial attributes) to be efficient in fighting ordinary crime, it needs to focus on the racial composition of marginal offenders. Efficiency thus may counter-intuitively call for targeting the group with the lower offending rates. In the context of terror, however, it has to be based primarily on differences in offending rates across racial population groups (group-wise averages). We demonstrate that, assuming correlation between race and crime, racial profiling would nearly always be efficient. Finally, we discuss equity considerations and suggest that if awarding compensation is perceived to be a viable policy option, it should be paid on an ex ante basis.     

Looking at Prediction from an Economics Perspective: A Response to Harcourt's Against Prediction

This article discusses Bernard E. Harcourt's Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age (2007 ). The book opposes the use of probabilistic methods, such as profiling, on efficiency, equity, and jurisprudence grounds. By contrast I argue that profiling is always efficient, that there is no theoretical flaw in reliance on actuarial methods, as long as they are implemented properly. I also show that the equity-based criticism of reliance on actuarial methods (Harcourt's ratchet effect argument) is based on two questionable assumptions: that profiling is perfectly efficient (as zero deterrence is assumed), and that the police are making an obvious logical mistake, by gradually increasing the extent to which they target the group with the higher offending rate instead of targeting only them in the first place.     

Mitigating the consequences of invasive security practices: a quasi-experiment in an international airport

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Invasive security practices create resentment, especially when targeting minority groups. Many studies of homeland security as well as of general policing...