Executive Summary
Scholars, policymakers, and the public view police legitimacy and community trust in the police as essential components of an effective police organization. Specifically, nurturing and sustaining legitimacy as well as trust is believed to increase the potential for the police to successfully solve and reduce crime, quell corruption, improve police-community relationships and interactions, and ultimately promote the rule of law. Existing research demonstrates that a solid footing of trust and legitimacy can lead to positive outcomes such as voluntary input, support, and cooperation from the community, which are necessary for police to carry out their duties and mission.
Conversely, a loss of legitimacy and trust may indicate that the public feels unsupported by and may be unwilling to cooperate with police. In turn, citizens who do not trust the police or perceive them as legitimate may be more likely to seek redress through alternative forms of security, such as vigilantism or other forms of violence. Police legitimacy and trust can also have important implications beyond law enforcement. Because police officers are often the first points of contact and the face of government with whom people regularly interact, police-citizen relations can characterize citizens’ perceptions of justice institutions more generally.
An extensive network of international and regional organizations, bilateral donors, international financial institutions, and civil society organizations aims to work with governments to improve policing practices and enhance police legitimacy. As a part of that network, the U.S. Department of State, through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), provides foreign assistance to and supports
capacity building for criminal justice systems and police organizations in approximately 90 countries. Like many donors, it strives to direct its resources to the most effective approaches to achieve its mission.
As part of its efforts to distill available knowledge and improve its programs, INL asked the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene an ad hoc committee to review, assess, and reach consensus on existing evidence on policing institutions, police practices and capacities, and police legitimacy in the international context. A committee was assembled with expertise in criminology, economics, international and organized crime, law, policing, and political science. The committee was tasked to produce five reports, addressing questions of interest to INL and the State Department. This report, the fourth in this series, responds to the question: What policing practices build community trust and legitimacy in countries with low-to-moderate criminal justice sector capacity?
Scholars have viewed trust and legitimacy as two distinct but correlated concepts. While building and maintaining police legitimacy and community trust in the police is vital in every country, the definitions and manifestations of these important pursuits vary by context and community. Related to the charge to the committee, an ultimate aim is for citizens to trust that police will promote the rule of law and protect the population. As such, we focus this report on the concept of legitimacy and ways of building legitimacy to foster this kind of trust and expectations. The committee relies on a working definition of legitimacy as a shared acceptance of an institution’s power and authority.
Procedural justice is one dominant focus and related practice believed to improve police legitimacy. Procedural justice emphasizes the importance of fair and respectful treatment within decision-making procedures and is hypothesized to contribute to legitimacy and citizen cooperation and compliance with authorities. Research shows that improving the quality of treatment and decision making by police officers makes citizens more likely to view the police as a legitimate institution, and in turn, comply with the law and cooperate with the police. Over decades, the scientific literature has developed the theories behind and investigated the associated practices for procedural justice as a primary driver for improving police legitimacy. However, while procedural justice training and practices have shown positive effects on some policing outcomes in some contexts, there is growing recognition that procedural justice alone may not be enough to secure police legitimacy with the public. In this report, the committee employs a broader conceptualization of legitimacy that includes four pillars: effectiveness, lawfulness, distributive justice, and procedural justice. While elements of these pillars can overlap, the committee suggests that a focused
assessment of each can help communities and donors identify priority areas for interventions likely to improve legitimacy.
The theoretical literature conceptualizing police legitimacy is large, but the causal empirical evidence on what works to establish legitimacy is limited. Until further research is available, the committee recommends that the four pillars be used to guide assessments of policing in various contexts and serve as a framework to monitor possible outcomes and unintended consequences of policing approaches. For example, even if police are effective in controlling crime, are their interventions also lawful and distributively and procedurally just? In contrast, if a police practice appears to be procedurally just, is it also effective in delivering positive public safety outcomes? Are there system-wide adjustments that can help achieve all four pillars of legitimacy?
An evidence-based approach to policing, detailed in the committee’s first report and used as an anchor for the committee’s deliberations and recommendations, is well suited for these inquiries. The core value of evidence-based policing is that police actions can be linked to outcomes using transparent, accountable, and scientifically sound approaches. Evidence-based policing can provide a process to monitor, track, and evaluate law enforcement’s ability to achieve the four pillars of police legitimacy.
As discussed further in Chapter 3, the committee recommends that foreign assistance donors working with police agencies to build trust and legitimacy in local communities should:
- Emphasize the attainment of all four pillars of effectiveness, lawfulness, distributive justice, and procedural justice that are needed to build legitimacy with communities and citizens;
- Train supervisors and managers on ways to hold officers accountable to behaviors that are effective, lawful, and consistent with the principles of distributive and procedural justice;
- Support the development of accountability mechanisms and systems;
- Promote evidence-based approaches to policing using scientific testing to measure outcomes of police practices and interventions and any improvements in perceived legitimacy;
- Assist in building the capacity of police agencies to instill in their police officers a community-oriented mindset and the disposition to act in accordance with that mindset; and
- Encourage agencies to treat their own officers fairly and respectfully.
