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This study explored notions of procedural justice and police legitimacy among university students in South Africa. We surveyed 482 South African university students (female =77.6%; black = 91.7%; mean age = 23.0 years, SD = 1.05 years) on the effect of procedural justice and other factors on their perception of police legitimacy. Following hierarch...
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We propose representation justice as a theoretical lens for socio-hydrology and water governance studies. An exploratory survey of 496 water sector employees in the United States revealed that self-identifying females felt more strongly discriminated against due to their gender and other social factors, compared to self-identifying males. Responses...
Citations
This article reviews the Police-citizen relations in Nigeria, a book written by Akinlabi Oluwagbenga Michael. The book is an important contribution to the literature on policing and police-citizen relations. However, the socio-political context of Nigeria should be covered to provide a proper context for the discussion of the findings in the book.
Objectives
To systematically review the effect of social identity and social contexts on the association between procedural justice and legitimacy in policing.
Methods
A meta-analysis synthesising data from 123 studies (N = 200,966) addressing the relationship between procedural justice and legitimacy in policing. Random effects univariate and two-stage structural equation modelling meta-analyses were performed.
Results
Both procedural justice and social identity are found to be significantly correlated with police legitimacy. Moreover, social identity significantly mediates, but does not moderate, the association between procedural justice and legitimacy. People of younger age and from more developed countries tend to correlate procedural justice stronger with police legitimacy.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that social identity is an important antecedent of legitimacy and a critical factor in the dynamics of procedural fairness in policing. It also shows that the extent to which procedural justice and legitimacy are correlated varies across social groups and contexts. The theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.
This study explored the views and perceptions of South African police officials on the use of excessive force by the South African Police Service (SAPS). Research has shown that for the police to be effective in handling public gatherings, the community is expected to obey the law and the police must enforce the law. Although obedience is expected from members of society towards police officials, disobedience occurs frequently, to the extent that police officers require sufficient skills to manage crowds, especially the disgruntled and the hard to manage. Although many studies abound on police excessive use of force in South Africa, with suggestions and recommendations on how the menace can be curbed, but this unacceptable conduct by the police persist unabated. A plausible reason could be the fact that the focus of most of these studies revolves around public perception or the views of specific segment of the society. However, the accounts of senior police officers-who are experts in the profession, especially those within the specialised units responsible for public order and crowd control management, are often jettisoned. No doubt their views would be valuable for policy intervention, considering their wealth of experience in the profession. Unfortunately, academic writings on this are sparse, hence this contribution of this paper. From the findings of a doctoral study that was undertaken using the qualitative research method, this study specifically considers the views and perceptions of South African police officials on the use of excessive force in public gatherings and major events. The participants in this study comprised 23 police officers, which included senior and middle management, who ranged from unit section heads, section commanders, unit commanders, policy and standards officers, information officers, to video operators and trainers. The participants were stationed in Gauteng (Pretoria), KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape. By using open-ended questions in a structured interview, the researcher increases the chances of obtaining rich and detailed responses that can be used for qualitative analysis. Interview times ranged from 20 to 30 minutes, with a few exceptions with experts in the field going over 50 minutes. An audio recorder was used to record the interviews. To maintain confidentiality, identifiers in the form of dates and numbers were used to code the transcriptions. In other words, the transcriptions bore no names, only numbers and dates. The interviews ceased when data saturation was reached; that is when information was repeated without any new views being presented. A summary of the key findings indicates that there is complete mistrust by communities in the use of force by the South African police. The findings of the research show that there was a divergence of views regarding the level of trust towards the police among police officials. The use of force by the police is still prevalent in South Africa, and such ruthlessness portend serious threat to law and order in the country. The shortage of police officials in the POP environment has become a huge challenge to dealing with sporadic or unplanned public gatherings that range from service delivery protests to political activities by dissatisfied members of the community. The tendency of authorities to deploy an insufficient number of members or a disproportionate number of members to deal with threat usually contributes to the use of excessive force by members of the police.
