Centering Race in Procedural Justice Theory: Structural Racism and the Under- and Overpolicing of Black Communities

Objective: We assessed the factors that legitimized the police in the United States at an important moment of history, just after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. We also evaluated one way of incorporating perceptions of systemic racism into procedural justice theory. Hypotheses: We tested two primary hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that perceptions of police procedural justice, distributive justice, and bounded authority were important to the legitimization of the police. The second hypothesis was that perceptions of the under- and overpolicing of Black communities also mattered to the delegitimization of the institution, especially for people who identified with the Black Lives Matter movement. Method: A cross-sectional quota sample survey of 1,500 U.S. residents was conducted in June 2020. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and latent moderated structural equation modeling. Results: People who viewed the police as legitimate also tended to believe that police treated people with respect and dignity, made decisions in unbiased ways, fairly allocated their finite resources across groups in society, and respected the limits of their rightful authority. Moreover, people who believed that Black communities were underpoliced and overpoliced also tended to question the legitimacy of the police, especially if they identified with the Black Lives Matter movement. These results held among Black and White study participants alike. Conclusions: At the time of the study, systemic racism in policing may have delegitimized the institution in a way that transcended the factors that procedural justice theory focuses on, such as procedural justice. This was especially so for individuals who identified with a social movement, Black Lives Matter, that had an extremely high profile in 2020. Public Significance Statement Just after the murder of George Floyd, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, racialized policing seemed to delegitimize the police in the perceptions of White and Black people alike. Calls for reform often revolve around making policing more respectful and less biased in terms of one-on-one encounters with the public, especially in underserved communities of color. Our findings suggest that racially directed under- and overpolicing should also be at the heart of debates around how to improve the popular legitimacy of the police and transform policing policy and practice.