October '21
The Impact of Trust and Integrity on Police Performance and Community Happiness: The Mediating Role of Procedural Justice
Mohammed Abdul Nayeem*
Associate Professor, Department of OB & HR, IBS Hyderabad (Under IFHE - A Deemed to be University
u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail: nayeem@ibsindia.org
This review explores the impact of trust and integrity on police performance and community happiness and the mediating role of procedural justice in the context of Telangana police. The relationship among the variables is established through a systematic literature review and accordingly, the research gaps are also identified. A conceptual framework is also presented to study the relationships. A mixed-method approach to validate the relationship in question through the collection of data is also suggested, hoping it would provide theoretical and practical implications and recommendations on making community policing more effective in generating community happiness.
The Government of Telangana has in place a citizens' charter to cater to the needs of
the people by making people-friendly police that determine government policies,
strategies, and services that would harness the virtues of positive lifestyle and well-being
in the community and a plan to develop happiness index to measure people's satisfaction
(Telangana Police Portal, 2019). The government has placed much importance on the
happiness of the communities, and community policing is one of the ways expected to
achieve it. The State follows a strategic vision of the State police concerning community
happiness and has initiated a wide spectrum of initiatives to achieve it. In the State,
community policing is employed to promote successful models that bring collaboration
between police and communities to address community concerns and ensure that the
police respond to the needs of the public in general, thus ensuring that trust and integrity
are developed for improved security.
A lot of research has been done on community policing in terms of how close the
police are to the community, the best practices, the effect on crime rates, external
strategies and security. However, there is still a need to investigate the effect of community policing at a general and very crucial level, that of community happiness, a concept which
has evolved in the Telangana context from "satisfaction".
Many researchers have explored the dynamics between police and ordinary people
(Hajek et al., 2008a and 2008b; Brown, 2020; Kumar et al., 2020; and Lauf and Waseem,
2020). This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of police trust and integrity on
performance on the one hand, and their effects on community happiness and the
mediating role of procedural justice.
Specifically, the study seeks to:
Literature Review
This study aims to evaluate the impact of police integrity, trust and performance on
community happiness, and as such the review of literature deals with these concepts
and constructs, as well as with any previous research undertaken linking them.
Community Policing
Community policing is hailed as one of the modern interactive phenomena between the
police and the public at large, especially when the community is a combination of diverse
population consisting of different nationalities and diaspora. This interaction enables viable
communication between both the police and the community. While it promotes harmony
and trust, it also helps maintain law and order in the country by participatory democratic
process. Community policing also creates a general sense of wellbeing, promotes a sense
of empowerment, greater adherence to local laws, and ensures community level
conformity (Druskat and Wheeler, 2004; and Turner, 2020)
Trust
According to Mayer et al. (1995; quoted in Dirks and Ferrin, 2001), the trustor evaluates
the trustee on his or her "capacity (ability, aptitude or proficiency to be able to do the
task), altruism (intention to be of service to the trustor), and honesty". Similarly, Mayer
and Gavin (2005) studied the connection between trust over each source of information
and found that source credibility also impacted the creation of trust. The researchers also
associated trust with the abilities of the trustor to believe and have faith (Mayer and Gavin, 2005). According to Yakovleva et al. (2010), the connection between the inclination to
trust and trust is mediated by reliability (Srivastava et al., 2020; and Malone and Dammert,
2021). Other researchers proposed that trust prompts chance-taking in a relationship
(Colquitt et al, 2007; and Lowatcharin and Stallmann, 2020) and that it dictates the
intention or "readiness to be defenseless". According to this perception of trust, people
in power and authority, like the police people, are likely to inspire trust if they appear
responsible, share data, not verify, and extend respect to others.
Kochel and Skogan (2021) examined some of the recommendations of 21st Century
policing on how police trust brings a culture of transparency and accountability in the
system. The data for the study was collected from 841 residents of Chicago. The policing
events and police transparency and accountability were known to the residents. The
authors tried to ascertain from the participants whether the claims by the police in
increasing transparency and accountability had any impact on the African-American
population living in Chicago and their perception about police transparency and
accountability. The findings revealed that the trust in police increased by almost 21%
among the African-American residents; on the other hand, the White residents became
more negative about the police in Chicago by almost 62%. Reforms in the police do bring
positive changes in society.
In another study, Mourtgos et al. (2020) looked at police trust in the public, which
is totally different from the earlier studies where the focus was on the public's trust in
police. The authors used Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's model of trust to conduct the
study in two parts. The study used its own scale, as one of the objectives was to create
its own scale for measuring police trust in the public. The data was collected from 990
police officers in the US. The job performance of the police officers was also evaluated
as part of the study. The results from the study showed that police officers had greater
trust in the public and engaged in more proactive action and did their job well. The study
provided a lot of insights into police-public relationships.
Integrity
Integrity has been defined variously in literature, but the one definition that is employed
in the context of police is that it applies to the police organization as a whole and individual
police personnel as well. According to this definition, integrity comprises the normative
inclination to not fall into the temptation of abusing their rights or privileges and refrain
from misusing their authority and power. In the same manner, according to Klockars
et al. (2007), integrity consists of having the ability to willingly reflect on and discuss
police conduct that borders on corruption or abuse. To ensure organizational integrity,
four dimensions need to be taken into account-the formation of rules and regulations
to inculcate discipline is of primary importance and hence these rules were framed to
check on violations. This approach underlines the role of organizational culture (setting
rules, managing investigations and disciplinary procedures, and creating an environment where misconduct is readily reported and punished). However, Klockars et al. (2007) also
emphasized that police integrity is linked with the community outcomes since the
community and the public have certain expectations from the police related to ethical
conduct and integrity.
Integrity means that trust is based on the belief that the police are always in control
of the community circumstances and that the community members have the right and
chance to discuss things they doubt or are worried about with the police. Trust is
considered as an essential part of having integrity-the community can trust a police
organization that has shown honesty, commitment, and reliability. In the same manner,
integrity is a reflection of how much pride the police organization or the police person
has in their job, as well as how inclined they are to help others by responding on time
and exhibiting intention to change their schedules to meet the needs of the others.
Klockars et al. (2000) based their research on the premise that trust and integrity
are not related to an individual police person's moral conduct, but are rooted in the
organizational culture. The research was conducted among 30 US police agencies, and
based on interviews of police personnel that asked them to give their personal opinions
about 11 hypothetical cases of police misconduct. The researchers developed their
findings based on how the officers reacted to the cases in terms of how serious they
considered the misconduct and how ready they were to report it and support punishment.
The researchers found that when the officers rated misconduct as serious, they were
likely to agree to report it and to support any ensuing punishment. The researchers
concluded that it was the organizational culture and environment that determined which
offense was considered by the police personnel as serious and which was considered
as minor-and as such suggested the role that leaders and supervisors in the police
organization can exercise in developing a suitable culture. It is by developing clear agency
rules and communicating them actively to all police personnel and enforcing conformity
at the ground level that police organizations can ensure integrity (Klockars et al., 2000).
In a similar research aimed at exploring the conditions of police offers in post-Dayton
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), researchers investigated the problems related to integrity
(Ivkoviae and Shelley, 2005). The research used 451 police offers to evaluate several
hypothetical cases of police misconduct. It was found that organizational culture was
linked with the officers' understanding of which offense was serious and which was not,
and hence they follow up the behavior of whether to report or not to report. The researchers
found that petty misconducts like the use of excessive force were likely to be reported
rather than opportunistic thefts by fellow officers according to the code of silence shared
by the personnel.
Huberts et al. (2007) found that integrity and ethical conduct among police officers
was linked with the leadership styles of their supervisors. The researchers were able to
link nine types of violations with three distinct leadership styles in the research that was
conducted among 2,130 police officers from The Netherlands. The results indicated that ethical misconduct within interpersonal relationships was reduced if the leaders modeled
ethical behavior, while strictness was able to curb fraud, misuse of resources, and
corruption.
Police Performance
The location and the political structure impact the ability of the police to act as the
instrument to implement the law, and hence the police performance is quite characterized
by the character of the law that authorizes the police action. This prompts different policing
capacities as well as inclinations in various social orders, and different regions. Also,
more often than not, actual police work depends on the conventional and casual social
constructs that may exist in the society like local superstitions, religions, taboos, shared
esteems, moral models, and traditions. While ideally, detached policing is expected,
where the members of the police force can take a completely objective approach, but
in practical situations it is rare. Moreover, detached policing is considered to be rather
insensitive and may cause more harm in multi-cultural societies (Paoline and Gau, 2020).
Reformatory policing is another approach to police work that presumes that individuals
are dissuaded from wrongdoing as long as discipline is extreme. Preventive policing is
another way to ensure that crimes do not happen, and it may require greater interaction
of the police with the community and other governmental agencies and a shared approach
to crime prevention. Police performance may also be reactive where a specific part of
the force is kept on stand-by to intervene in case of crisis, including medical emergencies
and natural disasters. An extreme form of policing is seen in authoritarian regimes, where
the police department has used an instrument for oppression. However, in most states,
police personnel are deployed for ensuring the protection of life and property, but they may
also be authorized to carry out tasks like regulation of trade licenses, overseeing inoculation,
or enforcing minimum wages or work hours (Murphy et al., 2015) state that police in Western
society restrict themselves to averting wrongdoing, keeping up open request, playing out
a scope for administration, directing activity, gathering political knowledge, and recognizing
lawbreakers. Corsaro et al. (2015) nonetheless state that as in the case of the United
Kingdom the scenario of police and citizens is different from that of other European
countries. There have been attempts by the police to educate UK citizens and expatriates
about their rights. In Scandinavian countries and Japan, police also play additional duties
like being neighborhood specialists. Also, there are differences in the amount of
weaponization of the police force in different countries (Ransley and Mazerolle, 2009).
Banerjee et al. (2021) studied Rajasthan, India, police to know whether the skilled
police officers identify the practices that are optimal in government institutions or not?
Using a large-scale randomized trial of the police, the authors tested the relationship with
four interventions and these interventions were also recommended by the police officers.
A fifth intervention was also created by incentivizing staff to improve service. The findings
from the study showed that only two of the five interventions have an impact (Singh and
Kumari, 2020). Other interventions were not proved to be effective. The conclusion from the study was that management reforms do improve policing, but skilled managers do
struggle to know the optimal interventions.
Community Happiness
According to Dennis et al, (2016), "The most immediate and possibly dependable
estimation of happiness in the community is to watch and measure a full range of feeling
reactions commonly connected with satisfaction among people without incapacities, for
example, grinning, snickering, and expanded development amid engagement with things
and exercises." Further, the authors explore the idea of community happiness: "Watching
reactions of people amid times of everyday exercises can likewise be utilized to gauge
misery with records, for example, crying, pushing without end, and shouting. The reaction
should be direct, generalizable, with conceivable clear face legitimacy, and indicating
dispassionately characterized reactions normally connected with satisfaction."
Hoeve et al. (2021) looked at the mindfulness of police officers to increase awareness
of the knowledge of mindfulness among police officers and the potential mechanism to
understand the changes in stress. The data was collected using self-report measures
through a quasi-experimental design for a group with a 6-week baseline period. The study
used SEM to analyze whether changes in mindfulness are associated with changes in
stress levels. The authors found police officers' stress improved with mindfulness
awareness including other outcomes like sleep disturbances, happiness, and workability;
on the other hand, the work-related outcomes did not change.
Procedural Justice
The importance of procedural justice has been confirmed by studies in different countries
(for example, Sargeant et al., 2020; and Nalla and Nam, 2020) and among many ethnic
groups (for example, Qureshi et al., 2020). Mourtgos (2020) has played an important role
in conceptualizing and anchoring the relationship between procedural justice and people's
trust in law enforcement.
Meta-analytic reviews of organizational justice studies have made it clear that
procedural justice influences quite a number of employees' attitudes; among them is trust
(Qusaeshi et al., 2020).
Jonathan-Zamir et al. (2021) investigated interpersonal interactions with police officers
and specific individuals, using qualitative data, and in-depth interviews with specific
individuals who encountered police officers as protestors, to know the role of procedural
justice. The authors identified four concerns: respect for the existence and cause of the
group, partnership with the group, recognizing the individual within the group and
displaying the "right" motivation with group-level treatment. The notion of fairness is
entrenched in the authorities' way of treating the people at large.
Procedural justice mediates the relationship between police trust, integrity, and
performance and community happiness.
Research Questions
The whole idea is to explore the above research questions and develop hypotheses
to test the relationship.
Conceptual Framework
Based on the research gaps and research questions, the following conceptual framework
is presented and can be empirically examined later with data collection to establish the
relationship between trust, integrity, and performance and community happiness.
Procedural justice mediates the relationship between trust, integrity and performance.
The framework expects that trust and integrity positively influence the performance of
police. Performance, in turn, influences community happiness (Figure 1).
Proposed Methodology
This study proposes to use a descriptive as well as an explanatory study approach and
to deploy a mixed research process where both qualitative and quantitative data should
be analyzed. This is in keeping with the requirements in social sciences research that
emphasizes taking into consideration all aspects of the situation (Mackey and Gass, 2015;
and Creswell and Creswell, 2017). Descriptive statistics is all about describing the
phenomena in detail and explaining the problems of a study, but it goes beyond the simple
description and explains the variables used in the study. And as such, it is most suitable
to find answers to the research questions framed by the author and has the quality to investigate
the 5Ws and H. The descriptive study aims to explain and describe the phenomena without having
to delve into why part of the study is in a given context (McNabb, 2017). As such, the proposed
study should employ an explanatory stance as well, which will enable the author to arrive at
the reasons for the relationship between the selected research variables. The proposed study will attempt to describe the relationship between theTelangana community's happiness and three
variables-community policing integrity, community policing trust, and community police
performance, as well as to explain/find reasons behind those relationships, and as such, statistical
data, as well as qualitative data, should be suitable for inclusion in the study to capture both
the incidence of these relationships and the reasons for them.
The proposed study should use both quantitative and qualitative methods, and be able
to overcome the limitation so that either method can yield a more relevant and
comprehensive set of data (Kumar, 2005). Quantitative methods enable the collection of
data that can be used to test the strength of the relationship between the variables, while
qualitative methods are used to understand the quality and nature of the relationship between
the variables (Creswell and Creswell, 2017). As such, the study could use a quantitative
survey as well as qualitative interviews. Triangulation should be used to combine the two
data streams into one study.
The proposed study should use a sequential explanatory design. This approach helps
in the collection of two diverse data streams sequentially so that the data collected from
one stream (more specifically, from the quantitative stream) can be further explained and
understood in the light of the second stream of collected data (qualitative data). In the
design of the proposed study, qualitative measures and results help the author to explain
the phenomena more deeply using the help of the statistical tools that are significant
in quantitative techniques including the demographic variables under the proposed study
(Creswell and Creswell, 2017). As such, the proposed study would first follow the
quantitative data collection design and then move on to the qualitative research design.
The target sample/population for the proposed study (for both quantitative and qualitative
streams of data collection) has to be selected from the 31 districts of Telangana state, India.
Sample Selection Technique
Quantitative sampling should be done in a random manner, where each item is selected
purely based on chance, using the roll of dice and selection of target respondents' names
from the list. This ensures that each respondent has an equal chance of inclusion, and
hence the resultant sample is truly representative of the entire population.
Qualitative sampling should be done using a non-random approach in the form of
purposive sampling and snowball sampling. This is in keeping with the nature of the study
as explanatory and to ensure that participants are knowledgeable and are able to provide
credible and relevant information that can help answer the research questions.
A pilot survey should be conducted with an adequate sample size to help establish
the exploratory nature of the relationship and reliability and validity of the instruments
measures.
Multiple regression analysis should be used on the quantitative stream of data to
assess the relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables
selected for the proposed study. Multiple regression is to be used since it is a suitable tool for assessing the strength of the relationship between variables. The relationship
between different aspects of one variable, such as happiness, and other variables should
be analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), providing statistical information
regarding the levels of variance within the regression model. The use of the F-test
determines the significance of the overall regression model to determine if the independent
variables are significantly related to the dependent variable. A Bonferroni correction is used
to correct family-wise Type I error rate. To test the results of the ANOVA, additional
analysis using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANCOVA) may be conducted.
The proposed study should also make use of descriptive and inferential statistics,
using the SPSS software. The data should be screened for normality with skewness and
kurtosis statistics, which are to be calculated through the descriptive statistics analysis
function in SPSS. If the skewness or kurtosis values computed in SPSS were to be greater
than +1, they would be considered outside the range of normality.
Expected Outcome of the Study
The proposed study has several theoretical and practical implications.
Not many academic works have been done in the Indian context, therefore, this
study brings out various concepts in police trust, integrity, performance, and
community happiness and their relationship with each other that may be useful to
the researchers.
The development of a comprehensive model (post data analysis) in the proposed study
would help in a better understanding of the subject matter and would open new horizons
to explore further:
Conclusion
This exploratory study is a result of various sources of information and a review of literature
on police trust, integrity, performance, and community happiness. Through the literature
survey, it has been established that police trust and integrity plays an important role in
their performance, bringing community happiness. The role of procedural justice as
mediating variable is also well researched in the area of trust and performance.
This study is exploratory in nature, and it has not collected primary data to draw major
conclusions. Therefore, it is important that the future studies collect the data to prove the research questions. In conclusion, the study contributes to the overall understanding of
police trust, integrity, performance, and community happiness. With trust in place, the public
can have faith in the police for protection and other administration purposes. A good
governance mechanism can also be achieved through public-police healthy relationships.
References