The Governance of Criminal Justice, Legitimacy and Trust

Hough, M., Jackson, J. and Bradford, B., ‘The Governance of Criminal Justice, Legitimacy and Trust’, in Body-Gendrot, S., Lévy, R., Hough, M. Snacken, S. and Kerezsi, K. The Routledge Handbook of European Criminology, Oxon: Routledge, 2013

28 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2012 Last revised: 16 Oct 2012

See all articles by Mike Hough

Mike Hough

King’s College London - Institute for Criminal Policy Research

Jonathan Jackson

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Methodology

Ben Bradford

University College London - Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science

Date Written: 2012

Abstract

This chapter presents findings on public trust in justice drawn from the fifth European Social Survey, carried out in 28 countries in 2010/11. The dataset used here covers 26 of the 28 countries, and has a total sample size of almost 51,000 people. The analysis is thus on a large scale, and serves as an exemplar of a particular approach to comparative research, involving empirical testing of a theoretical model. We and colleagues designed the module on trust to test an elaborated version of Tyler’s (Tyler 2006; Tyler and Huo 2002) procedural justice theory, which posits that fair treatment by police and other justice officials yields public trust in justice, which in turn consolidates the legitimacy of institutions of justice, and thus public cooperation and compliance with the law. To anticipate our conclusions, we find good support across a variety of European countries on the links between trust in the police and people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of the police.

Keywords: cooperation, procedural justice, trust in the police, police legitimacy, normative commitment, social capital

JEL Classification: K40

Suggested Citation

Hough, Mike and Jackson, Jonathan and Bradford, Ben, The Governance of Criminal Justice, Legitimacy and Trust (2012). Hough, M., Jackson, J. and Bradford, B., ‘The Governance of Criminal Justice, Legitimacy and Trust’, in Body-Gendrot, S., Lévy, R., Hough, M. Snacken, S. and Kerezsi, K. The Routledge Handbook of European Criminology, Oxon: Routledge, 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2141811

Mike Hough (Contact Author)

King’s College London - Institute for Criminal Policy Research ( email )

Strand
London, WC2B 2LS
United Kingdom

Jonathan Jackson

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Methodology ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
+0044-207-955-7652 (Phone)

Ben Bradford

University College London - Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science ( email )

35 Tavistock Square
London, WC1H 9EZ
United Kingdom

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