ABSTRACT

The previous chapters have shown that police stops are unevenly distributed across social and geographic space. People who live in some types of area, and, in particular, those who belong to certain social groups or categories, are significantly more likely to be stopped than others. Once stopped, they are often also more likely to be searched. In the present chapter the discussion turns to the effect these experiences might have on the trust they invest in, and the legitimacy they grant to, the police. What implications for police-public relations arise from this form of police activity? All encounters between police officers and citizens are ‘teachable moments’ (Tyler et al. 2014), generating and communicating information concerning the status of the parties involved, the relationship between them, and their mutual positions within wider social structures and processes. The behaviour of police officers indicates to people the extent to which the police behave in a fair manner, are effective, abide by the rules, direct their attention toward the right ends and seek to achieve these via normatively justifiable means (Bradford et al. 2009; Jackson et al. 2012, 2013; Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler and Fagan 2008; Tyler et al. 2015; Van Damme 2015). Furthermore, officer activity contains information concerning not only the police (their trustworthiness and legitimacy) but also about the citizen: about the moral worth the officer assigns to them and their positions with social groups the police both represent and partially define (Bradford et al. 2014; Loader and Mulcahy 2003; Parmar 2011; Waddington 1999). Contacts between police and public can also have significant downstream implications. This is particularly likely to be the case for policeinitiated, enforcement-oriented encounters, such as police stops, not least because these are moments where the citizen, and perhaps also the police, have much at stake – for the citizen, of course, one possible outcome is arrest and entry into the criminal justice system. Experimental and longitudinal research has shown that public experiences of police-initiated encounters are associated not only with legitimacy judgements (Mazerolle et al. 2011, 2012) but, in a much wider sense, with subsequent behaviour, including offending behaviour (Wiley and Esebenson 2016; Slocum et al. 2016). In this chapter and the next Tyler’s procedural justice model is used as a framework for exploring, first, the implications for trust, legitimacy and

compliance that arise from the experience of being stopped and/or searched, and second, linking to literatures concerned with the role of the criminal justice system as an engine of identity formation and transformation, the associations between the experience of procedural justice or injustice during police stops and the social identities of those stopped is considered. Street and traffic stops, like all police behaviours, can affect not only what people think of the police but also what they think of themselves. Police unfairness, in particular, can serve to shunt feelings of belonging and affect away from groups associated with the police and perhaps towards other, more marginal or indeed problematic identities. In both chapters data from a number of survey sources are used. The two most important are the CSEW, as introduced in Chapter 5, and the London Metropolitan Police Public Attitudes Survey (PAS – Stanko and Bradford 2009; Stanko et al. 2012). The PAS is a large-scale, representative survey of Londoners that shares some characteristics with the CSEW but unsurprisingly has a far greater emphasis on public attitudes toward the police. Other sources are also used, however, and in keeping with the practice elsewhere in the book they are introduced as they become relevant to the discussion.