Some excellent evidence regarding the impact that procedural justice can have in specific interactions between the public and the police can be seen in an experimental study that was conducted in Australia between December 2009 and June 2010. According to a findings report by Mazerolle, Bennett, Antrobus, and Eggins (2012), the study conducted an experiment involving over 20,000 Australian drivers who were stopped for Random Breath Tests (RBT). For half of the RBT stops, police followed normal operating procedures. For the other half of the stops, officers were given a script that incorporated elements of procedural justice – such as fairness, neutrality in decision-making, showing respect, and listening to the involved citizen’s opinions.
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Opinions of system legitimacy are influenced by interpretations of the legitimacy of individual events over time. With each new encounter with law enforcement or the court system, the positive or negative connotations of the event add to previous experiences and build an internal view of system legitimacy. If a person questions the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, they will be less likely to report crime or reach out to part of this system for help. This then cascades into the consequence that the police and courts have less assistance from the community in their policing, making their job that much more difficult. As an example, the woman who works for an escort service and is raped should be able to go to the police for help regarding the assault. Instead, in many instances, the stigma of where she works leads many in law enforcement to view her as the criminal rather than the victim. She may actually be arrested for prostitution rather than find justice against the man who raped her. In the future, she would be less likely to go to the police for help again. Furthermore, even though she may have information that is useful to the police – names of her clients, pimp, maybe even drug dealers – her distrust of law enforcement will keep her from cooperating in any
Opinions of system legitimacy are influenced by interpretations of the legitimacy of individual events over time. With each new encounter with law enforcement or the court system, the positive or negative connotations of the event add to previous experiences and build an internal view of system legitimacy. If a person questions the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, they will be less likely to report crime or reach out to part of this system for help. This then cascades into the consequence that the police and courts have less assistance from the community in their policing, making their job that much more difficult. As an example, the woman who works for an escort service and is raped should be able to go to the police for help regarding the assault. Instead, in many instances, the stigma of where she works leads many in law enforcement to view her as the criminal rather than the victim. She may actually be arrested for prostitution rather than find justice against the man who raped her. In the future, she would be less likely to go to the police for help again. Furthermore, even though she may have information that is useful to the police – names of her clients, pimp, maybe even drug dealers – her distrust of law enforcement will keep her from cooperating in any