Police Legitimacy

2056 Words5 Pages

Police Legitimacy
With the current environment of law enforcement and the struggle with trust and legitimacy within communities; police departments are exploring programs that seek to increase police legitimacy. The You Have Options program is such an example of a program that can build trust and legitimacy with a vulnerable population within communities. Research by Mazerolle et al. (2013) noted that “police legitimacy is thought to be a sure pathway for police to elicit cooperation, obtain compliance and gain satisfaction from the public.” The pathway to promoting legitimacy is through procedural justice where police provide a high quality of treatment, are fair, and make good decisions. The 20 elements of the You Have Options program …show more content…

Wolf et. al. (2015) described procedural justice as police decisions that are viewed as fair when citizens are given the opportunity to express their views during officers’ decision-making processes. Research by Tyler (2014) identified procedural justice is a method of attaining legitimacy.
The 20 elements are an important procedural justice process for law enforcement because police officers have not always had the right strategy to respond to sexual assault victims. This is reinforced by research by Jordan (2008) who noted there had been significant criticism aimed at police departments about disbelieving and insensitive attitudes officers display towards victims reporting rape and sexual assaults. However, research by Mastrofski et. al. (2016) found that officers are more likely to provide procedural justice to citizens perceived to be “deserving” because they are victims, helpless, or because they requested police …show more content…

In the 20 elements victims are given several options on how they want to tell their story, and they can control when and how they do it. The second theme was people want the authorities to be neutral. For example, victims do not want to be judged or blamed. A major problem with reporting sexual assaults for victims is they often get or feel blamed for the assault. Research by Elliot, Thomas, and Ogloff (2012) also gave insight that non-blaming attitudes on the part of the police are deemed to be important to

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