Police Effectiveness and Procedural Justice as Competing Public Values: Moving Beyond the Instrumental-Versus-Normative Model of Police Legitimacy

This study argues that the dichotomy of instrumental-versus-normative motives in mainstream policing literature can mislead the ways in which police effectiveness and procedural justice shape people’s judgments about the police. Effective policing may be important even for individuals who do not directly benefit from it, while procedurally just policing can bring instrumental benefits, particularly for underprivileged social groups. We propose an alternative framework that characterizes police effectiveness and procedural justice as competing public values, of which the salience depends on political dynamics that vary across time and space. We explored the South Korean case where advocates for effective crime control and procedural justice are vying without one side decisively outweighing the other. Analysis of a representative cross-sectional survey shows that people’s perceptions of police effectiveness and procedural justice are both positively associated with trust in the police which, in turn, is positively associated with willingness for voluntary compliance and cooperation. Broader implications for theory and policy are discussed.