Self-help, policing, and procedural justice: Ghanaian vigilantism and the rule of law

Self-help, policing, and procedural justice: Ghanaian vigilantism and the rule of law

Self-help, policing, and procedural justice: Ghanaian vigilantism and the rule of law

Article Type: Perspectives on policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 32, Issue 4

J. Tankebe,Law and Society Review,Vol. 43 No. 2,2009,pp. 245-70,

In this article, Tankebe is looking for a relationship between citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice in policing and whether there is a resulting support for vigilantism in Ghana.

The idea of procedural justice is drawn from Tyler (1990) and expanded to see whether views regarding fairness and equity influence vigilante behavior by citizens as a response to law enforcement practices. Four hypotheses were presented. The first hypothesis was if citizens experience corruption and have perceptions of police ineffectiveness, they are more likely to support vigilantism. The presence of citizen perceptions of procedural unjustness leading to an expression of support for vigilantism was the second hypothesis posited by the author. Hypothesis three was that if citizens perceived the police as trustworthy, they would be less likely to support vigilantism. The last hypothesis was that individuals who achieved a higher level of education would be less likely to support vigilantism.

The data were collected in summer of 2006 using a multi-stage sampling technique of households from the Census Enumeration Areas of Accra, Ghana. These data were supplemented with information from the 2000 Population and Housing Census. The final sample consisted of individuals 18 years of age or older from each household. The response rate for the survey was 83.1 percent, with 374 out of 450 individuals responding. Control variables used were age, gender, education, prior contact with the police, victimization, and political affiliation. Independent variables were divided into three categories. The first category was performance, which included the variables of (police) effectiveness, corruption experience, and corruption reforms. Procedural justice was the second category, consisting of the variables distributive fairness, quality of (police) decision-making, and quality of treatment (by the police). The third category, trustworthiness, consisted of just that variable. The dependent variable in the analysis was public support for vigilantism in Ghana.

Using OLS regression, four models were established. Model 1 included the aforementioned control variables. Only age and education predicted public support for vigilantism; specifically, individuals who were older and less educated were more likely to support vigilante actions. This relationship accounted for 7 percent of the variance in the model. Model 2 included the variables in the performance category. There was no effect of perceptions of effectiveness or experienced police corruption on public support for vigilantism. However, with an increased amount of perceived interest in anti-corruption measures (corruption reforms), there was less public support for vigilantism. This accounted for 11 percent of the variance in the model. The third model incorporated the category of procedural justice. The only significant relationship was that of quality of treatment; that is, perceptions of good treatment by the police resulted in less public support for vigilantism. The other variables were not significant, but the creation of a procedural fairness index (quality of treatment and quality of decision-making) resulted in reduced support for vigilantism when procedural fairness was positive. The last model found that when the police were perceived as less trustworthy, there was more support for vigilantism. Tankebe concludes that vigilantism stems from a perception of reduced fairness and equity rather than from the perceived ineffectiveness of policing.

Megan A. PaxtonUniversity of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA