Procedural Justice - Subject Baseline

This measure appears in the following time-points: Baseline.

Related Construct

Perceptions of Procedural Justice

Description of Measure

The Procedural Justice inventory was adapted for this study to measure the adolescent's perception of fairness and equity connected with arrest and court processing. The approach taken here was an adaptation of those taken by Tyler (1997). Conceptually, the idea is that there is an experiential basis for translating interactions with legal processes into perceptions and evaluations of the law and the legal actors that enforce it. This measure is designed to tap several dimensions of fair treatment: correctability, ethicality, representativeness and consistency (see Tyler and Huo, 2002). The outcomes of this process include evaluations of law and its underlying norms: legitimacy and legal cynicism.

The 55 items in this measure are divided into four sections: Police {Direct Experience & Others' Experience (e.g., "The police treat me the same way they treat most people my age.")}, Judge {Direct Experience & Others' Experience (e.g., "The court considered the evidence/viewpoints in this incident fairly.")}, Legitimacy (e.g., "I feel people should support the police."), and Legal Cynicism (e.g., "Laws are meant to be broken.").

A one-factor CFA was conducted for each of the scores generated below at the baseline time point. The values produced from this analysis are as follows:

Procedural justice scales for police - direct experience (alpha: 74; NFI: .79; NNFI: .78; CFI: .81; RMSEA: .08. A second model which dropped 2 items from the scale was also fit to the data; however, the working group agreed that nothing was gained by the dropping the two items. The one-factor model using all items is the one kept in the data set, although these fit statistics indicate only marginal fit)
Procedural justice scales for police - others experience (alpha: 57; NFI: .96; NNFI: .93; CFI: .97; RMSEA: .06.)
Procedural justice scales in court - direct experience (alpha: 75; NFI: .80; NNFI: .78; CFI: .82; RMSEA: .07. A second model which dropped 2 items from the scale was also fit to the data; however, this model offered little advantage and the model with the full item set was kept in the data set. Again, the fit statistics below indicate only marginal fit.
Procedural justice scales in court - others experience (alpha: 66; NFI: .93; NNFI: .90; CFI: .94; RMSEA: .08).
Legitimacy index (alpha: 80; NFI: .91; NNFI: .90; CFI: .92; RMSEA: .07).
Legal cynicism index (alpha: .60; NFI: .98; NNFI: .98; CFI: .99; RMSEA: ,03).

Eight scores are computed:

Summary procedural justice indices for police [s0pjcop]; mean of 19 items
Procedural justice scales for police - direct experience [s0pjcopu]; mean of 14 items
Procedural justice scales for police - others experience [s0pjcopo]; mean of 5 items
Summary procedural justice indices for judges [s0pjjudg]. For the majority of cases, this will be computed as a mean of 19 items. If the subject has not had any contact with the courts however, this will be computed as the mean of eight items.
Procedural justice scales for court - direct experience [s0pjjudu]. For the majority of cases, this will be computed as a mean of 14 items. If the subject has not had any contact with the courts however, this will be computed as the mean of three items.
Procedural justice scales for court - others experience [s0pjjudo]; mean of 7 items
Legitimacy index [s0legit]; mean 11 items
Legal cynicism index [s0cynic]; mean 5 items

Data Issues

A response of 7 (NA - no court contact) to item s0proju3 (During your last contact with the court system, how much did the judge let you tell your side of the story) will cause 11 questions that are logically linked to the above question to be skipped. All of these items are used in the computation of s0pjjudg (judge total) and s0pjjudu (court - direct experience). Depending on the mix of endorsed items, the summary scores may represent less than the total items.

If the subject has had prior contact with the courts, s0pjjudg is computed as the mean of 19 items. If no prior contact, this is computed as the mean of eight items.
If the subject has had prior contact with the courts, s0pjjudu is computed as the mean of 14 items. If no prior contact, this is computed as the mean of three items.

References

Casper, J., Tyler, T., and Fisher, B. (1988). Procedural justice in felony cases. Law and Society Review, 22(3) 483-507.
Tyler, T.R. (1990). Why People Obey the Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tyler, T. (1997). Procedural fairness and compliance with the law. Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 133 (2/2), 219-240.
Paternoster, R., Brame, R., Bachman, R., and Sherman, L.W. (1997). Do fair procedures matter? The effect of procedural justice on spouse assault. Law and Society Review, 31, 163-204.
Srole, L. (1956). Social integration and certain corollaries: An exploratory study. American Sociological Review, 21, 709-716.
Sampson, R.J. and Bartusch, D.J. (1999). Legal cynicism and tolerance of deviance: the neighborhood context of racial differences. Law and Society Review, 32(4), 777-804.