A Community Study of Procedural Justice & Criminal Justice System Legitimacy (MOCJ)


Summary

The Justice Collaboratory conducted a community study on behalf of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), looking into New Yorker’s engagement with the city government. The study, which ran from 2017-2018, focused on three broad themes: residents’ perceptions of and involvement in the life of their neighborhoods, knowledge of municipal services and participation in city government, and perceptions of fairness, or lack thereof, in residents’ dealings with the New York Police Department.


Approach

  • In 2017-2018, we conducted a phone-based survey with 2,500 adult residents of the five boroughs of New York City. 

  • To complement our survey, we conducted in-person interviews with 200 volunteers from the survey sample. 

  • We measured and compared the influences of community-member judgments about participation, voice, effectiveness, and fairness, grounding our analyses in legitimacy and procedural justice theory.

Funding

This project was funded by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ).


Publications

O'Brien, T. C., Tyler, T. R., & Meares, T. L. (2020). Building popular legitimacy with reconciliatory gestures and participation: A community‐level model of authority. Regulation & Governance, 14(4), 821-839.

O'Brien, T. C., & Tyler, T. R. (2020). Authorities and communities: Can authorities shape cooperation with communities on a group level? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 26(1), 69.

O'Brien, T. C., & Tyler, T. R. (2019). Rebuilding trust between police & communities through procedural justice & reconciliation. Behavioral Science & Policy, 5(1), 34-50.

Johnston, R., Gripp, C., O’Brien, T., Sarnoff, C. N., Cox, A. (2018). A Study of Procedural Justice and Criminal Justice System Legitimacy. New Haven: The Justice Collaboratory/Yale Law School.


Researchers

Tracey Meares
Principal Investigator 

Tracey Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School.

Tom Tyler
Principal Investigator

Tom Tyler is the Macklin Fleming Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory.

Monica Bell
Researcher

Monica Bell is Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

Alexandra Cox
Researcher 

Alexandra Cox is Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex.

Camila Gripp
Researcher 

Camila Gripp is Senior Research Associate at the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School.

Rachel Johnston
Researcher 

Rachel Johnston is Research Director at the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School.

Thomas O’Brien
Researcher 

Thomas O’Brien is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School.

Megan Quattlebaum
Researcher 

Megan Quattlebaum is Research Scholar in Law and the Program Director of the Justice Collaboratory at the Yale Law School.

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2019 Workshop on Data-Driven Criminal Justice Reform and Data-Driven Prosecution