Crime, Trust and the Legitimacy of Legal Institutions:

A Comparative European Analysis

Jonathan Jackson, LSE Mike Hough, Institute for Criminal Policy Research, Birkbeck, University of London

Ben Bradford, University of Oxford Katrin Hohl, LSE Tia Pooler, LSE Jouni Kuha, LSE

European Social Survey

• Round 5 included a 45-item module on ‘trust in justice’:

– trust in the police and courts – legitimacy of the police and courts – punitive attitudes – cooperation with legal authorities – compliance with the law (including the morality of law-breaking and

the perceived risk of sanction)

• Main questionnaire also has measures of:

– the frequency and impact of worry about crime – victimisation experience

Trust in justice: A comparative European story

• 28 countries in the ESS:

– Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic , Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Ukraine

• Data from 26 countries now available

Trust in the police and criminal courts

• Trust is the public belief that the police and courts have the right intentions and are competent to do what citizens trust them to do

• The ESS R5 module asks about people’s perceptions of the trustworthiness of the police (and separately, the criminal courts) to act effectively and fairly – Trust in effectiveness (are the police and courts effective?)

– Trust in procedural fairness (do they wield their power in fair ways?)

– Trust in distributive fairness (do they treat groups equally?)

Trust in police procedural fairness

Three measures, but let us focus on just one for now

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Finland

Denmark

Spain

Germany

Ireland

Sweden

Norway

Switzerland

United Kingdom

Belgium

Netherlands

Estonia

Slovenia

Croatia

France

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Hungary

Poland

Greece

Portugal

Bulgaria

Slovakia

Israel

Russian Federation

Ukraine

Citizens views on how often police make fair and impartial decisions: by country Not at all or not very often (as opposed to often or very often)

Trust in court effectiveness and procedural fairness

Belgium

Bulgaria

Switzerland Cyprus

Czech

Germany

Denmark

Estonia

Spain

Finland

France United Kingdom

Slovenia Croatia

Hungary

Ireland

Israel

Netherlands Norway

Poland

Portugal

Russia

Sweden

Greece

Slovakia

Ukraine

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

3 4 5 6 7

How

oft

en d

o co

urts

mak

e fa

ir, im

part

ial d

ecis

ions

bas

ed o

n av

aila

ble

evid

ence

? (h

ighe

r val

ues =

mor

e of

ten)

How often do courts make mistakes that let guilty people go free? (higher values=more often)

Trust in court's procedural fairness and competence

Reflective measurement and cross-national comparisons

• Our scales are designed to reflect specific latent variables

• Cross-national comparisons should thus be comparisons of latent means or proportions

• We are investigating measurement equivalence, conducting sensitivity analysis: – To what extent are estimates of latent quantities sensitive

to freeing up differential intercepts and factor weights?

Testing models of crime-control

• Early analysis showing that Tyler’s procedural justice and legitimacy framework works well across Europe

• These are the most important (and consistent) associations:

– Negative contact with the police – Trust in police procedural fairness – Legitimacy – Cooperation with the police & compliance with the law

Why do people cooperate with the police across Europe?

• Most important pathway:

– Negative contact with the police – Trust in police procedural fairness – Moral alignment with the police – Cooperation

The effect of police fairness and effectiveness on felt obligation to obey the police

procedural fairness effectiveness

The effect of police fairness and effectiveness on moral alignment with the police

What about compliance with the law? The ESS asked:

Testing this model across Europe • In general, the model fitted. Here is a graphical representation of the relative

weights of the predictors of buying stolen goods:

0.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

0.90

1.00

Moral alignment with the police

Obligation to obey the law

Obligation to obey the police

Morality of buying stolen goods

Risk of buying stolen goods

Final thoughts

• Work continues…

– But early analysis suggests strong support for a normative model of crime-control

• Institutions of justice should stress principles of procedural justice: – voice, neutrality, treatment with respect and dignity, and trust in

authorities.

• Procedural justice builds legitimacy

• …and legitimacy builds cooperation and compliance

What is legitimacy? 1. Felt obligation to obey

• The first aspect of legitimacy is people’s feelings of obligation to authority

– Legitimacy is a value that leads the person holding it to feel a responsibility and obligation to defer to the law and the decisions of legal authorities

– People recognise the power of authorities to dictate appropriate

behaviour

• they recognise the right of authorities to rule when they obligated to obey

Obligation to obey the police

European Social Survey Round 5 measures

What is legitimacy? 2. Moral alignment

• The second aspect of legitimacy is people’s feelings of moral alignment with authorities

– The police are a source of regulation, but they are also maintain order and secure justice

• Links to the idea of policing by consent – People are more likely to act in ways that support the police when

they feel aligned to the moral purpose and values of officers

Moral alignment with the police

European Social Survey Round 5 measures

Why do people cooperate with the police?

• The European Social Survey asked people:

– ‘If the situation arose, how likely would you be to do the following

three things …?’ Response alternatives were ‘very likely’, ‘somewhat likely’, ‘not too likely’ and ‘not likely at all’

– …call the police to report a crime they had witnessed – …report suspicious activity near their house – …provide information to the police to help find a suspected criminal

Buying something that might be stolen … • 94% said :not once in the past year • 3.8% said: once • 1.3% said: twice • 0.6% said: three or four times • 0.4% said: five times or more

• 94% said: not once • 6% said: at least once

– So the probability of a randomly selected individual in the sample saying they had bought something that might be stolen is 0.06

• Our question is whether this probability varies according to other characteristics:

– Perceived morality of the act – Perceived risk of getting caught – Perceived legitimacy of the police and law