Trust in the Law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts

Chapter 3. The California Study of Personal Experiences with the Police and the Courts

Chapter 3 The California Study of Personal Experiences with the Police and the Courts To EXAMINE the role of procedural justice and motive-based trust in activating intrinsic motivations, we focus in this chapter on the results of a studyconductedin1998inwhichwe interviewed 1,656 residents oftwo California citie~akland and Los Angeles. (For details about the design of this study, see Huo and Tyler 2000.) These individuals were chosen because they indicated during the interviewer's initial telephone contact that they had had at least one recent personal experience with the legal authorities in their community. Each respondent was interviewed about his or her most recent personal experience with a police officer or a judge; about the procedural justice he or she experienced during that encounter; about his or her trust in the motives of the particular authority; about his or her willingness to accept voluntarily the decisions made or directives issuedby that authority; and about his or her satisfaction with the authority. The respondents were also asked about their more general attitudes about the legitimacy of legal authorities and about their trust in and identification with others in their community. In the California study, we focused heavily on the members of two minority groups-African Americans and Hispanics. Both ethnic-racial groups are more economically deprived and socially marginalized than whites in this country (Schlesinger 1992). As a consequence, each group has a longhistory ofdifficult relationships with the police and the courts. Although African Americans and Hispanics share minority status, a variety offactors clearly differentiate the two groups. African Americans are a traditionally disadvantaged group with a long history of oppression and discrimination inAmericansociety. Most Hispanics, in contrast, are relatively recentimmigrants, and many Hispanics retain strong emo- The California Study of Personal Experiences 29 tional, economic, and family ties with their country of origin. It has also beensuggested that the two groups differ in their relationships with legal authorities (Lasley 1994): Hispanics have a more positive relationship to legal authorities than do African Americans, but a less positive relationship to them than do whites. Our study considered each of these minority groups separately and compared the experiences of their members to the experiences ofwhites, traditionally the majority group. (For a discussion of which groups may actually be the true minority groups, now or in the future, see Unz 1999.) Although the California study disproportionately sampled minority group members, it is important to note that our procedures were such that we did not target high-risk community residents-the young, minority males who are the focus of much concern among legal authorities and criminologists. We did include young, minority males in the sample, and we discuss this group separately; however, that subgroup is likely to be underrepresented in the study, sincethese young men are less likely to have residences and telephones. In addition, they are less likely to be at home to answer their telephones, and less likely to be willing to cooperate with interviewers. The two cities in which we conducted the study, Oakland and Los Angeles, have large minority populations. Of the two cities, policecommunity relations have recently been most visibly troubled in Los Angeles, where there have been several highly publicized instances of police brutality toward minority group members (the case of Rodney King, for example). After we conducted this survey, the enduring nature of the problems in the police-community relationship in Los Angeles was further illustrated by a new police scandal-the Rampart Division scandal, which involved issues of police corruption in minority neighborhoods. Police-community relations are a recurring issue within the community of disadvantaged minority group members in Oakland as well, although police-community relations are generally better in that city. The primary focus of the California study was on the factors that shape the public'S willingness to accept the decisions made by legal authorities. We explored the factors shaping both the satisfaction that people feel with particular legal authorities and their willingness during personal encounters to defer to the decisions of those authorities. The Design of the Survey As psychologists, our primary concern is with people's attitudes, judgments , and feelings, and with the role of these subjective elements in shaping behavior. In this study we interviewed people by telephone to 30 Trust in the Law understand their attitudes, judgments, and feelings about a recent personal experience with a legal authority. We asked each respondent to indicate the nature of...