Institute Research Highlighted in IACP’s The Police Chief

November 30, 2015 – Rob Worden and Sarah McLean published “Police Legitimacy, Procedural Justice, and the Exercise of Police Authority,” a Research in Brief in The Police Chief (volume 82, November, 2015, pp. 14-16), the periodical of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Based on their study of police legitimacy and management accountability, Worden and McLean stress that whether – and not how – police use their authority – especially when they search citizens – is a key influence on citizens’ subjective judgments about their contacts with police, and a potential source of leverage in improving police legitimacy. When citizens are searched, their assessments of their experiences are less favorable, regardless of the procedural justice with which police exercise this authority. Worden and McLean suggest, however, that it may be possible to prevent or repair the damage to citizen attitudes that is done in this way