Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in St. Louis:

A Review of the Relevant Literature

Dennis Ellis

University of Missouri-St. Louis

“…a procedural justice-based approach to regulation creates social order by engaging public cooperation with law and legal authority. Such cooperation is engaged when people in the communities being policed experience the police as exercising their authority fair.”

-Sunshine & Tyler (2003).

Introduction

Police-community relations (PCR) have become a forefront issue a major forefront issue

in recent years and the St. Louis is perhaps ground zero for much of this discourse. The police

response in the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014 became a

news and social media phenomenon and has been a catalyst for the anger of communities in St.

Louis as well as Baltimore, Charlotte, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and elsewhere. Such anger had

not gained this kind of broadcast or political attention since the deaths of Rodney King and

Edward Garner and in the years since these events little has been done to quell the accusations of

racism and disregard for minority, primarily African American, communities by the police.

Establishing legitimacy through the criminal justice system is complex and difficult due

to the myriad of levels and actors involved in the process. Where one might accuse the police of

institutional racism, perhaps the courts are to blame for sending swaths of black men to prison

and perhaps the legislative and executive branches are to blame for formalizing polices for such

treatment. Correctional services often get tagged with offering little in the way of rehabilitation

and in the case of municipal jails offering little in the way of a civilized facility. Either way, the

police often take the brunt of these frustrations and as the face of the government should be

prepared to take such anger but should also strive to establish relationships when possible.

As the face of law enforcement, the police must also be educators of the system and use

their discretion in a way that is fair and consistent. Research by Tyler (1990) and others indicates

that people are more positively responsive to fair and informed treatment in their police

interactions such as traffic stops and searches. Furthermore, the procedural justice model (Tyler,

1990) can work as a basis for appropriate police action and demeanor and lead quite well into the

court system and correctional management. Through the use of procedural justice and

appropriate discretion in an age of intense scrutiny, the police can re-establish legitimacy in

disorganized, depleted, and discontent communities and become the community resource they

have claimed to be for the past fifty or so years.

The Criminal Justice System in America and St. Louis

Changes in the American criminal justice system are often sluggish and lethargic

requiring a catalyst that threatens social order to even get off the ground. The past thirty or forty

years have been dominated by the War on Drugs and mandatory minimum sentences for such

offenders both of which have had dramatic effects on prison populations, private prisons, the

courts, and the law enforcement officers who often make the first determination of those entered

into the criminal justice system; this is the oft mentioned gatekeeper role of the police and one

that often brings them under fire (The House I Live In, 2012). This is not the only issue that

communities, especially minority communities have had with the police but it is certainly one of

the most prevalent and most recent. Such issues have also arisen in municipal courts in small

towns and cities such as Ferguson, Jennings, and Florissant all of North St. Louis County in

Missouri and all of which that have received flak as running a debtors prison operation through

their courts and jails and most notably their police departments (Department of Justice, 2015; St.

Louis Post-Dispatch, 2016). While the use of these actors as agents of unfair and unjust

administration is difficult to ultimately prove, there are strong implications that such operations

are common perhaps most especially so in St. Louis County and its ninety municipalities. In an

effort to fully understand this issue, a look at the context of crime and deviant behaviors is

necessary.

Crime, Incivility, and Disorder in the Greater St. Louis Region

While most would agree that Part I crimes – murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault,

burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson – are deserving a swift and severe response

from the criminal justice system, Part II crimes and municipal code violations are a bit more

subjective and the responses for these are the ones that will be most considered. Relevant Part II

crimes include: drug violations, vandalism, drunkenness, driving under the influence, and

vagrancy laws (FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2016). Municipal codes are similar across the board

– ordinances for lawn growth, engine or stereo noise, parking violations, and others pervade the

criminal justice system and have allowed cities such as Ferguson to finance a government

through the financial crippling of their own citizenry (Department of Justice, 2015).

Crime is of course a major issue is St. Louis and St. Louis County and as the region

continues to work towards healing in the aftermath of the Ferguson events, more and more

pressure is being put on law enforcement to not only solve the crime issues but to establish

legitimacy as well. St. Louis is a city with a population of approximately 315,000 that is well

known for baseball, thin pizza, and violence with homicide having risen from 120 in 2013 to 159

in 2014, 188 in 2015, and 175 as of December 6, 2016 (St. Louis Police, 2016). St. Louis County

has a population about one million which is quite diverse in terms of race and socioeconomic

status although most specific groups are located on specific places; the county overall has had

homicide totals recently of: 37 (2013) 34 (2014), 61 (2015), and thus far 49(2016) (Missouri

State Highway Patrol, 2016). These are staggering numbers, especially in the city of St. Louis

but they do not fit well into the discourse on PCR as Murder and other violent crimes are not

terribly indicative of a positive or negative relationship with the police. Addressing these issues

can be a way of improving the image of the police to their community but the areas where police

and the community interact the most are those where lesser crimes (Part II) occur, when police

make a stop of a vehicle or pedestrian, or during a community event. The community events will

not be discussed as the focus here is going to be in the law enforcement and order maintenance

roles of the police.

Part II crimes, the ones that some segments of society consider uncivil helped form the

basis for much criminological theory: social disorganization, strain, and routine activities to

name a few and also work as the basis for PCR discourse (Agnew, 1992; Bursik & Grasmick,

1993; Cohen & Felson, 1979). These are particularly useful theories for looking at disorder and

incivility as generators of crime such that these Part II crimes such as drug abuse, public

drunkenness, and the popular “broken windows” lay the groundwork for Part I crimes such as

robberies and assaults (Wilson & Kelling, 1982). These disorder crimes are much more common

place than most Part I crimes and likely also make up a significant portion of the Dark Figure of

Crime. In the city of St. Louis (2014) a few categories stood out in the arrest data: drug

violations (3,351), disorderly conduct (1,412), others (3,228) - these three combined accounted

for 7,991 arrests which was nearly half (13,093) of all Part II crime arrests and 1.8 times the Part

I arrests (4,486). Unincorporated St. Louis County (2014) returned the following data under

similar offense designations: drug/narcotic violations (1,583), disorderly conduct (801), others

(557) – their data is a bit more spread out in terms of designation though and unincorporated

parts of the county vary in population demographics compared to themselves and the city. St.

Louis County also features about 90 distinct municipalities, some of which collect their own data

and some of which have the St. Louis County Police Department collect their data. This

fragmentation complicates the picture of crime in the area and given the ability of police

departments to skew data through definition, non-reporting, and officer/supervisor discretion,

crime and disorder in St. Louis is effectively impossible to fully understand and the variance

from city to city (sometimes a matter of just a few square miles) makes policing exponentially

more difficult and as seen in Ferguson gives communities reasons to be untrusting, contentious,

and angry. The citizens and the police deserve better treatment from each other and this will only

be achieved through a long and arduous rebuilding process centered around the police

establishing legitimacy and the courts following the rules of procedural justice (Tyler, 1990)

Ferguson

Ferguson is a small inner-ring suburb located in north St. Louis County that has been

ground-zero but much of the recent PCR discourse and rightfully so as a Department of Justice

(2015) report found egregious civil rights violations by the city through its manager, courts, and

police department:

“Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather

than by public safety needs. This emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional

character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional

policing, and has also shaped its municipal court, leading to procedures that raise due

process concerns and inflict unnecessary harm on members of the Ferguson community.

Further, Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices both reflect and exacerbate

existing racial bias, including racial stereotypes. Ferguson’s own data establish clear

racial disparities that adversely impact African Americans. The evidence shows that

discriminatory intent is part of the reason for these disparities. Over time, Ferguson’s

police and municipal court practices have sown deep mistrust between parts of the

community and the police department, undermining law enforcement legitimacy among

African Americans in particular.”

This quote embodies the issue disrupting minority communities across the country and

one that is especially pervasive in the northern parts of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Patterns

of improper stops, discriminatory use of discretion, a lack of response to calls for service,

limited, if any, due process and a lack of established legitimacy have stalled PCR going back to

the Wickersham Commission (1931) and beyond. Substantial evidence is detailed throughout the

report (Department of Justice, 2015):

- The Ferguson Municipal Court had traffic and non-traffic cases doubled from about

25,000 of each to about 50,000 of each between 2009-2014.

- Such penalties are especially harsh both in volume and in fiscal amount

- The Ferguson Police Department (FPD) violated the First, Fourth, Fourteenth, and

other federal law especially in relation to African American.

- Such egregious actions have become internalized by rank and file officers and harsh

discipline from supervisors backs up this internalization.

- Such discipline encourages officers to write each and every possible citation during a

stop – a practice that is further encouraged/required by the now former City Attorney

- Officer discretion was abused and used to make arrests and write citations during

incidences which would not call for such action

- FPD does not thoroughly investigate complaints of officer misconduct and some

residents fear repercussions for complaining

- FPD does participates in few, if any, community engagement practices or activities

and this causes further divide between the community and the police

- FPD, as of 2014 employed 54 commission officers, only 4 of which were African

American while the population was approximately 75% African American causing

further divide and tension

The practices and the stories detailed throughout The Ferguson Report are indicative of the long

standing problems between minorities and law enforcement. Such problems are still pervasive

today and the complexities of policing in a modern society are the framework on the discussion

to follow. Although these problems did not begin in Ferguson, the city remains a focal point for

discourse and sets St. Louis as a whole on the map for the future of policing.

Legitimate Policing

Policing is a complex profession with a variety of duties and responsibilities: calls for

service (CFS), vehicle and pedestrian stops, use of discretion, procedural justice, and the overall

establishment of legitimacy. Various issues arise in each of these categories and perfection in

each is near impossible to find as the segments of society differ in many ways. While use of

force is a pervasive concept right now it will not be discussed due to its relative rarity compared

to other police actions and the need to focus on these more day-to-day actions.

Calls for Service

People call the police for a variety of reasons ranging from being victims of crime,

reporting a disturbance, being in a vehicle accident, and almost limitless other reasons. Such

calls are the main type of customer service offered by law enforcement and are perhaps the

reason that police do little crime fighting and vastly more order maintenance. Calls volumes vary

by location and it is not uncommon for certain addresses to put in many calls and certain

neighborhoods to have substantially higher volumes than adjacent neighborhoods or other nearby

communities. In fact, a report by Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger (1989) discovered that 5% of

addresses in Minneapolis were responsible for about 64% of calls for service. A look at St. Louis

implies a similar spread of crime, six of seventy-nine neighborhoods were responsible for the

highest volumes of both person and property crime in 2014 (St. Louis Police Annual Reports,

2014). Of further interest is the population in these areas as there tends to be a disproportionate

use of police services by low-income and minority people – perhaps a hearkening back strain

theories and although St. Louis and Minneapolis have vastly different demographics, it would

not be a stretch to speculate where these calls might be coming from in each city (Agnew, 1992;

Reiss, 1971; United States Census, 2011). Calls for service have a profound effect on the way

communities view their law enforcement and selective perception of one bad interaction could

poison any positive interactions from the past or in the future (Groeger, 1997). In her 1996 study

of the Hyde Park neighborhood in St. Louis, Carolyn M. Ward discussed police response with

residents and the police district. Her talks with residents were revealing with statements that the

police were delayed in responding, did not respond, told them to deal with problems themselves

or move, and that dispatchers either transferred them to hotlines or hung up completely; officer

and dispatcher demeanor was also mentioned (Ward, 1996). In discussing responses and the area

in general with the rank and file officers, Sergeant, and Captain of the district she found that

many of them liked the area because the calls often involved more serious crimes such as

robberies and homicides (Ward, 1994).

Stops

When police officers make a traffic stop, people are often inclined to be upset and angry

and question the reason for such stops and although the use of proper procedure can neutralize

such feelings, resentment and questioning are likely to persist (Tyler, 1990). Tyler’s book Why

People Obey the Law explores some of these questions through a normative perspective of legal

compliance focusing on the sub-perspectives of whether a particular law is just or whether a

particular legal authority has established legitimacy to the point of being able to regulate

particular behaviors (Tyler, 1990). This is important when considering traffic stops and the

consternation that communities, especially minority communities, feel when being stopped by

the police. As the Ferguson Report indicates, minorities are stopped more often than non-

Hispanic whites and although Ferguson is a majority African American community which

neutralizes that argument to an extent, it is apparent in other research and Department of Justice

actions that minorities are more at risk of being stopped by the police (Becker, 2004; Shaw,

2015). And prior even to these in Whren v. United States (1996), the police were given broad

discretion in making traffic stops relating to potential drug violations of which there is a

seemingly pervasive misunderstanding that black and brown men are more prompted to possess

and use various narcotics that whites (Russell, 2001; Tonry, 1995). Place also seems to be of

concern in regards to police stops and racial profiling such that police officers having an

articulable knowledge of an area may feel that someone is out of place such as an African

American being in a predominantly white neighborhood and feel inclined to stop this person

based solely on race although they can neutralize this by using a traffic violation as the probable

cause (Meehan & Ponder, 2002). The authors further speculate that three things have helped

further neutralize racially motivated police stops: (1) the growing use of automobiles for

transport to (2) leisure and work activities that moved to more suburban areas and (3) the War on

Drugs and its use as reasonable suspicion for searches (Meehan & Ponder, 2002). As perhaps the

most common form of citizen contact by the police, traffic stops represent (1) the beginnings of

procedural justice and (2) often, the first step of establishing legitimacy.

Discretion

Calls for Service and traffic stops are propelled partially by the reason for the call or stop

but also by the decisions made by the officer in the encounter. Use of discretion in law

enforcement is an important tool for officers to limit the burden they put on the criminal justice

system and to find innovative ways to handle certain issues in which arrest might be legally

permitted but might also be a non-conducive strategy for a particular problem. Discretionary

decisions are made in every citizen contact and can be influenced by a variety of things from

seriousness of the offense to environmental issues to demeanor of an individual or even

influences from the police organization (Walker & Katz, 2012). Discretion is important when

considering the workload of calls and stops as well and it appears that as crime levels rise

discretion might rise as well perhaps leading to further rising or crime levels in some

neighborhoods Klinger (2004):

“as levels of deviance increase, officers become more cynical, view victims as less

deserving of police protection, come to see more crimes as normal features of the social

scene in the areas they patrol, and have fewer resources to deal with any specific incident

because higher levels of deviance translate into higher police workloads. As a

consequence, officers working patrol areas characterized by higher levels of deviance

will adopt a more lenient approach to their jobs, being less likely to vigorously enforce

the criminal law, and thus let pass more minor sorts of criminal conduct.”

Discretion has an expansive impact on legitimacy and in their 2012 text The Police in America,

Samuel Walker and Charles M. Katz offer broad concepts for the effective and ineffective use of

discretion. Some effective uses include: good judgement, fair policy and justice and efficient use

of resources while some of the ineffective uses include: underenforcement of the law,

discrimination and denial of dues process (Walker & Katz, 2012). Policing is complicated and

although there is some push to control officer discretion, it appears that such discretion is

important and must be tuned to fit specific communities and their needs and desires from the

police department. While the stops and calls may be an opening for police contact, the decisions

made by the officers are important in influencing people’s feelings towards the police and such

decisions are the opening for procedural justice practices.

Procedural Justice

Procedural justice represents the notion that people may be more concerned with the

process of how a particular outcome is reached more so than the outcome itself (Tyler, 1990).

This is important in relation to policing because outcomes are often undesired (arrest, citation) or

the response to a call is delayed or different than expected. This circles back to the normative

perspective discussed earlier, if people feel that a police officer has the right to justify a stop and

the officer uses an appropriate procedure for explaining his reasoning for the stop and the

outcome (citation), then people may be more inclined to be compliant with paying a fine (Tyler,

1990). This could extend to arrest for a standing warrant, explanation for response delay, or other

criminal justice actions but as Tyler (2006) explains a big part of the ideology of procedural

justice is to push people towards self-regulation and towards a collective societal model similar

to Durkheim’s mechanical society or even Sampson’s collective efficacy model (Merton, 1934;

Sampson, 2008; Tyler, 2006). Compliance both in specific police contacts and to the law and

legal authorities more generally is behaviorally motivated by the actions and demeanor or the

officer(s) which may become a behavioral motivator for citizens to practice more self-regulation

(Tyler, 1990). This book further illustrates the importance of reinforcing the normative

perspective towards such self-regulation and compliance as deterrence and harsh punishment

seem to lag in effect compared to positive experience both within and vicariously through the

legal system (Tyler, 1990). In a test of traffic stops and field sobriety exams, Mazerolle,

Antrobus, Bennet, and Tyler (2013) found that people who felt the police were justified in

performing the sobriety exam also held beliefs that most police actions were generally justified.

This procedural justice policing is a process model that seemingly can be used as a framework

for fair and impartial policing where interactions with specific officers and specific organizations

that follow the model can work to reinforce the normative perspective and enhance legitimacy

(Skogan & Frydl, 2004; Tyler, 1990). Procedural fairness is also seemingly enhanced within the

organization such that trust in supervisors using fair and impartial forms of discipline and

training helped to reinforce officer compliance with rules and policies and further reduced the

likelihood of misconduct, abuse of authority, and use of force (Haas, Van Craen, Skogan, &

Fleitas, 2015). A supervisory model with a focus on procedural fairness could seemingly have

broad implications for fair and impartial policing and would reinforce officer’s internalizing of

such practices. Organizations should be following such models and using the events of the past

few years to reorganize themselves with a focus on model community, problem-oriented, and

procedural policing practices.

Legitimacy & its Establishment

In an effort to develop partnerships and relationships with the community and to avoid

lawsuits and Department of Justice interference it will be imperative for officers and agencies to

establish legitimacy among their citizenry and among the citizens who pass through a particular

area. This is a difficult proposition given the current atmosphere but by practicing procedural

justice, both internally and externally, it can be ingrained as the only appropriate method of

policing (Haas, Van Craen, Skogan, & Fleitas, 2015; Skogan, Van Craen, & Hennessy, 2015).

As is further mentioned by Tyler (1990), gaining compliance through procedural justice is ideal

because it forces citizens to rationalize their actions based on their view regarding the law and

allows justice to be fairly distributed among various segments of the population based on these

views. Essentially, the police in their deterrent role can have only a minimal effect but that effect

can become much greater if (1) the public believes in the law being enforced (2) it is being

enforced fairly across all segments and (3) the process of enforcement is fair across all segments.

A further key issue for legitimacy and procedural justice is that is participation in the sense that

people want to feel as though they are participating in the process such that no matter the

outcome their input was considered in the overall evaluation of the situation (Tyler, 2004). This

same article also considers neutrality of the authority, the respect shown by the authority to the

other party and perhaps of most intrigue, the intentions of the authority (Tyler, 2004). This is

intriguing when one looks at arrest data, media accounts, and documents like the Ferguson report

and views what appears to be some staggering disparities in records and a lack of procedural

fairness in the qualitative studies. Some further work from Tyler and Huo (2002) indicates that

the expectation of fairness is found across all groups in society and that especially for African

American and Hispanic communities, the main reason for resentment towards legal authorities is

poor treatment during interactions primarily with police officers and the judiciary. As was

mentioned before traffic stops are often the most common form of police-citizen contact and

often the point of much consternation regarding racial profiling and fair treatment. In a recent

study of street stop data in New York City, Tyler, Fagan, & Geller (2014) found evidence that

repeated stops, no matter how fair or procedural the treatment, led to lower feelings of legitimacy

by residents 18-26. This is an interesting age bracket representing people coming out of their

prime ages for crime but perhaps still young enough to fit the crime profiles; future research

should look at other age brackets and other cities with similar and vastly different levels of foot

traffic. Yet another study looked at legitimacy more broadly as a social concept which is

reinforced by the police through not only the fair treatment of citizens but success in their crime

fighting missions (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003):

“By focusing on the psychology underlying views about their legitimacy among

members of the public, the police can enhance their image in the eyes of the public, be

objectively more effective in enforcing the law, and gain greater discretion in performing

their regulatory duties”

This holds important implications regarding police practices that have dominated the culture for

many years and indicates that such actions can be used and viewed as legitimate so long as they

are supplemented by fair and consistent treatment. This will allow for order maintenance and

crime control and prevention to remain the main missions of the police and be supported by the

majority of the public as a whole; a level a duality rarely seen in American law enforcement. If

such duality were achieved, it is reasonable to believe that the claimed neighborhood focus of

many police agencies could actually be realized and become itself a legitimate model of

decentralized police management. Although these are broad conjectures, it is important to

consider such notions and to focus efforts on achieving maximum satisfaction among the public

which ultimately determines the legitimacy a police organization has on any given day.

Discussion

St. Louis is a sort of enigma featuring extreme concentrations of Part I crimes in the

northern part of the city and county as well as moderate to high levels in the southern parts of the

city and county and also moderate levels in the inner-ring suburbs and central corridor. Part II

crimes and municipal ordinances are similar is their concentrations but are a major focal point of

municipal policing in the municipalities of St. Louis County, especially those in the northern and

central areas. Policing is substantially fragmented between about 60 agencies in about 580 square

miles with some agencies covering less than four square miles and others covering up to sixty-

seven square miles. Most seem to average between six and twelve square miles. This

fragmentation is exacerbated on main thoroughfares such as Page Avenue, Lindbergh Boulevard,

St. Charles Rock Road, and Interstate-170 by having a myriad of agencies with jurisdiction on

these roads. This creates an extreme limit in the establishment of legitimacy through procedural

justice as these various agencies all hold different standards for their officers and some have

been accused of using their citizens as a revenue source for the city.

In reviewing studies on calls for service is apparent that this is an important source of

citizen contact and that such contacts can have a substantial effect on police legitimacy because

one negative interaction can have lasting effects on a citizen (Groeger, 1997). Traffic and

pedestrian stops are perhaps the most common form of police contact and serve as a sort of

balance test for legitimacy as people who feel their outcome was fairly processed may be

inclined to justify a law or legal authority both in that situation and in more general scenarios

(Tyler, 1990). Given that calls for service are often for desired police service and police stops are

typically unwanted actions it should be no surprise that the discretionary decisions made my

police officers in each of these situations have a profound effect of the outcomes and the feelings

of legitimacy by the citizenry. Such decisions are seemingly effected by a myriad of subjective

influences from a wide range of social and legal constructs. All of these set the framework for

procedural justice practices and the establishment of legitimacy which seems to work on a

continuum from officer to agency and specific situations to general situations:

Establishing legitimacy is then a multifold and unending process and one that can be

disrupted, reversed, and hindered abruptly by a single incident or long-term practice. As Tyler

(1990) indicates, procedural policing is a strong backbone for legitimacy as it allows citizens to

normalize their behavior to (1) societal standards, (2) departmental conduct standards, and (3)

interactional standards with specific officers. Normalization of such conduct and by extension

normalization of laws and legal authorities will help police agencies in being able to fulfil all of

the roles expected by their citizens (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). This normalization/legitimacy is

reinforced by fair treatment to all by internally by police supervisors towards line-level

employees and externally by police officers towards all segments of the public (Haas, Van

Craen, Skogan, & Fleitas, 2015; Skogan, Van Craen, & Hennessy, 2015; Tyler & Huo, 2002).

Establishing and maintaining legitimacy then must become one of the primary goals of all police

agencies and perhaps most especially of those serve the most diverse communities. It is only

through legitimate, fair, and procedural policing that we may see some reductions in the

seemingly rising rates of violent crime in cities like Chicago and St. Louis.

Officer

- Fair/respectful treatment

- Justified reasoning

Agency

- Reputation

- Procedural Policing

Specific

- Call for service

- Traffic stop

General

- Order Maintenance

- Crime Control

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