Public Cooperation With the Police in Ghana

Does Procedural Fairness Matter

Bibliographic Data

ID9681024
AuthorsJustice Tankebe (0000-0002-6819-445X, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume47
Issue4
Pages1265-1293
Publication date2009-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCriminology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0011-1384 • E-ISSN: 1745-9125
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1745-9125.2009.00175.x
OpenAlexW2022960731
LanguageEN
Citations received230
References cited46

Recent criminological emphasis on the salience of normative concerns, such as procedural fairness and legitimacy, in understanding public law‐abiding behavior has been based on evidence from Anglo‐American studies. This article examines these issues in the African context based on general survey data from Accra, Ghana. The results show a lack of empirical validity, in the Ghanaian context, of the Sunshine–Tyler legitimacy scale. The results also show that public cooperation with the police in Ghana is shaped by utilitarian factors such as perceptions of current police effectiveness infighting crime. It is argued that the importance of perceived police effectiveness to public cooperation is a result of police legitimation deficits and the public's alienation from the Ghana police, which in turn are traced to the colonial history of the police and current poor police performance

Alienation · Context (archaeology · Criminology · Geography · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Normative · Perception · Political science · Politics · Procedural justice · Salience (neuroscience · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access