ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that for policing to enhance the public good, it needs to be associated with certain institutional virtues. Where it is associated with vices, it diminishes the public good. Foremost among these institutional virtues is legitimacy. The chapter begins by setting out why legitimacy is such an important aspect of the relationship between police and public. The authors do this by considering legitimacy as an empirical component of the relationship between police and public, with a particular emphasis on how legitimacy is formed and reproduced, and the extent to which legitimate – or illegitimate – policing can influence the behaviours and indeed subjectivities of the policed. At the most fundamental level, legitimacy concerns the justification of power by those subject to authority, and their obedience of that power.
