675019

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CJPXXX10.1177/0887403416675019Criminal Justice Policy ReviewPryce

Article
Criminal Justice Policy Review
2019, Vol. 30(3) 428­–450
The Relative Effects of © The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0887403416675019
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Models of Policing on Police journals.sagepub.com/home/cjp

Empowerment: Evidence
From a Sample of Sub-Saharan
African Immigrants

Daniel K. Pryce1

Abstract
This study examines the relative impacts of normative and instrumental models of
policing on willingness to empower the police in a sample of sub-Saharan African
immigrants in the United States. Using data from a survey of 304 Ghanaian immigrants,
obligation to obey, procedural justice, effectiveness, and gender predicted police
empowerment; legitimacy of Ghana police and risk of sanctioning did not. The results
also show that obligation to obey may be distinct from legitimacy. The findings from
the current study point to the importance of the process-based model of policing
in different geopolitical contexts, including the sub-Saharan African immigrant
community in the United States. Specifically, obligation to obey and procedural justice
play pivotal roles in engendering willingness to empower the police in the sub-Saharan
African immigrant community. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords
police empowerment, procedural justice, legitimacy, effectiveness, Ghanaian immigrants.

Introduction
This study examines the differential impacts of normative and instrumental models of
policing on willingness to empower the U.S. police in a Ghanaian immigrant commu-
nity in the United States. There are several studies that have looked at the disparate

1North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:
Daniel Pryce, North Carolina Central University, 1801 Fayetteville Street, Durham, NC 27707, USA.
Email: dpryce@nccu.edu
Pryce 429

impacts of normative and instrumental models of policing (see, for example, Akinlabi,
2015; Karakus, 2015; Sargeant, Murphy, & Cherney, 2014; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003;
Tankebe, 2009), but this is the first study to examine the relative effects of normative
and instrumental models of policing on police empowerment in any sub-Saharan
African immigrant community in the United States.
First, this study contributes to the extant literature on policing by using a data set
that is distinct from all other data sets used in prior research. Second, because most
existing research on the process-based model is on U.S. citizens domiciled in the
United States, on the one hand, and Africans living on the African continent, on the
other hand, this study extends scholars’ understanding of the process-based model by
examining the views of a subset of sub-Saharan African immigrants now domiciled in
the United States. Finally, this study adds to scholarly studies on procedural justice,
legitimacy, and related concepts that explain policing in developing and postcolonial
societies (Johnson, Maguire, & Kuhns, 2014; Kochel, Parks, & Mastrofski, 2013;
Tankebe, 2009). In other words, the process-based model of policing, which argues
that normative models of policing exert a greater influence than instrumental models
on the public’s willingness to cooperate with and empower the police (Sunshine &
Tyler, 2003; Tyler, Schulhofer, & Huq, 2010), must be tested in several geopolitical
contexts (Tankebe, 2009)—functional democracies, totalitarian regimes, and even
immigrant communities in open societies—to establish the universality of the model.
Research has shown that normative models of policing tend to trump instrumental
models of policing mainly in Western societies (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler et al.,
2010), whereas instrumental models appear to hold a stronger influence than norma-
tive models in developing countries (Tankebe, 2009). Knowing which model of polic-
ing is more effective in a particular geopolitical context would contribute immensely
to policing success in that community. If, based on the results of empirical studies,
people who grew up in oppressed societies tend to view the instrumental model of
policing as more important to policing success than the normative model (Sargeant
et al., 2014; Tankebe, 2009), do the perceptions of such people change when they
move into a society that respects the rule of law? In other words, will instrumental
models exert a greater influence than normative models in the current study, due to the
fact that 95% of the participants in this study were born in Ghana, a country where
police brutality is rampant (Tankebe, 2008, 2009)? The current study will attempt to
answer this question.

Ghanaian Immigrants in the United States

Ghanaian immigrants in the United States form a subgroup of sub-Saharan African
immigrants who began to immigrate to the United States in large numbers starting in
the early 1960s. For example, approximately 50% of all immigrants who received
green cards through the Diversity Visa Lottery program in 2010 were African immi-
grants (Migration Policy Institute, 2011). Passed into law by the Immigration Act of
1990, the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery program offers people from nations with tradi-
tionally low rates of migration to the United States the chance to seek permanent
430 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

residence via a lottery “administered by the U.S. Department of State. The African
born [alone] accounted for 48.0 percent (or 23,903) of the 49,763 persons who
obtained legal permanent residence through the program in 2010” (Migration Policy
Institute, 2011, p. 1).
A contributing factor to Africans’ increased migration to the United States, begin-
ning in the 1960s, was the lifting of restrictive laws that prevented non-Europeans
from immigrating to the United States in large numbers (Logan, 1987). This surge in
Africans’ immigration to the United States means that the group members’ views
about the police will become increasingly important to successful policing in local
communities across the country.
The states with the largest numbers of African immigrants are New York
(164,000), California (155,000), Texas (134,000), and Maryland (120,000); and U.S.
metropolitan areas with the highest concentrations of African immigrants include
New York (212,000) and Washington, D.C. (161,000) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014).
The City of Alexandria, Virginia, where this study was carried out is based just out-
side of Washington, D.C., which may explain its relatively large concentration of
Ghanaian immigrants. And with increased migration comes the need for U.S. police
agencies to address the policing needs of these migrant communities, whose under-
standing of policing may be vastly different from that of native-born citizens
(Menjivar & Berajano, 2004).
Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey
(2012), the African population in Alexandria, Virginia, grew by 10% between 2010
and 2012 alone—from 8,695 to 9,537. Of the nearly 146,300 city residents in 2012,
24.5% was foreign born (U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2012),
which made the city an ideal place for studying Ghanaian immigrants’ perceptions
of willingness to empower the police. Of those born in Africa, the population from
Ghana was one of the largest, accounting for 1,209 of the 9,537 people who had
emigrated from the African continent (U.S. Census Bureau, American Community
Survey, 2012). Thus, these official data reflect the context in which the survey par-
ticipants are situated, which underpins the complementariness of this study to the
overall understanding of sub-Saharan African immigrants’ roles in improving polic-
ing in the United States.
Although the police can choose to ignore foreign-born community members’ polic-
ing needs, the police would be sacrificing intelligence and information-gathering as a
result. As immigrant communities get larger, their willingness to cooperate and
empower the police will become vital to policing success in both native-born and
immigrant communities, as a single tip from a community member—native-born or
immigrant—is all that may be required to effect an arrest or stop a terrorist plot. Davies
and Fagan (2012) have argued that gauging immigrants’ perceptions of local U.S.
police agencies is essential for learning whether these foreign-born members of the
community are encumbered by “former experiences with and perceptions of the crimi-
nal justice systems of the countries from which they emigrated” (p. 106; see also Davis
& Henderson, 2003). Thus, unearthing information about immigrants’ perceptions of
the U.S. police becomes essential to the maintenance of law and order.
Pryce 431

Literature Review
Empowerment of the Police
Police empowerment is defined as the public’s willingness to give the police “a wider
range of discretion to perform their duties” (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003, p. 517). When the
police are empowered, they would win or maintain the public’s trust and confidence,
which allows the decisions of the police to be more readily acceptable to community
members (Bayley, 2006). When the police lack empowerment, their actions, decisions,
and directives are ignored or denounced by community members (Sunshine & Tyler,
2003). Police empowerment is thus intricately tied to the public’s willingness to tolerate
the police’s use of force, and in the aftermaths of recent, highly publicized events
involving the police and community members in New York City; Ferguson, Missouri;
Baltimore, Maryland; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, it
behooves the police to regain the trust and confidence of minority community mem-
bers, including sub-Saharan African immigrants, to improve police–public relations.
Because the police depend on empowerment by the public to maintain law and order
and secure the peace, any ruination of the relationship between the police and commu-
nity members should be of grave concern to police leaders, researchers, policy makers,
and society at large. Thus, studies that aim to promote police empowerment are impor-
tant to the security and safety of all community members. Research demonstrates that
the public would cooperate with and empower the police if the latter are seen as trust-
worthy and procedurally fair (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 1990).
Empowerment allows the police to be more responsive to community members’
policing needs, and in some cases justify the “use [of] asymmetrical force over others”
(Steinberg, 2011, p. 482) to maintain law and order. As the police earn the public’s
trust, they would be granted a wider discretion by community members to perform
their law enforcement functions, which are critical to the maintenance of the rule of
law (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). In addition, studying community members’ willingness
to empower the police is important because it has a direct impact on support for, coop-
eration with, and legitimacy of the police.
Empowerment of the police also means that police agencies would receive fewer
complaints against officers on the beat. Gauging community members’ willingness to
empower the police may help the police “to develop new strategies that will improve
public attitudes, change policies that are determined to be detrimental to positive atti-
tudes, and reinforce those behaviors that are responsible for positive behaviors”
(Frank, Smith, & Novak, 2005, p. 212). If citizens and immigrants are to become (or
remain) the “eyes and ears” of the police in their communities (Cordner, 1995; Wycoff,
1995), then their willingness to empower the police must be assessed and the findings
applied to police agency decision making.

Procedural Justice and Legitimacy of U.S. Police

Prior research has shown that the police can reduce disorder and prevent crime via two
types of policing models: normative and instrumental (Tyler, 2006; Tyler et al., 2010).
432 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

The normative model highlights “self-regulatory, normative motivations” (Tyler et al.,

2010, p. 366). Thus, procedural justice and legitimacy are conduits through which
community members’ internalized sense of obligation to obey authority figures and
legal institutions are activated. Current empirical evidence suggests that a more posi-
tive assessment of the legitimacy of authority figures will lead to a more positive
response from the public regarding the decisions of those authority figures (Tyler
et al., 2010). When people perceive that the police are legitimate, they are more likely
than not to obey the law and assist the police to fight crime (Reisig, Bratton, & Gertz,
2007). Because legitimacy increases citizens’ willingness to obey the authorities (e.g.,
the police), it is a key element in studies measuring police empowerment, as it empha-
sizes citizens’ values rather than a dependence on outcomes that affect behavior
(Mazerolle, Bennett, Davis, Sargeant, & Manning, 2013).
Research also ties the legitimacy of institutions to the normative concept of proce-
dural justice (Tyler & Fagan, 2008; Tyler et al., 2010). Bowers and Robinson (2012)
have argued that

procedure is legitimacy’s starting point. People come to obey the law and cooperate with
legal authorities because they perceive their legal institutions to operate fairly. In this
way, perceptions of procedural fairness facilitate a kind of normative, as opposed to
purely instrumental, crime control. (p. 214)

In other words, citizens obey the law not because of fear from the state—and its agents
of coercion—but because they willingly choose to do so. As a result, behavior may be
shaped by the values people hold in society (Tyler et al., 2010).
A number of studies have measured how procedural justice policing affects citi-
zens’ willingness to obey police officers (Tyler & Fagan, 2008), as well as empower
officers to make them more effective in the community (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). “If
citizens perceive that the police act in a procedurally just manner—by treating people
with dignity and respect, and by being fair and neutral in their actions—then the legiti-
macy of the police is enhanced” (Mazerolle, Antrobus, Bennett, & Tyler, 2013, p. 34).
Because the police depend on the community for help in maintaining law and order
(Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997), the normative model of policing becomes
important in assessing community members’ willingness to empower the police
(Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). In fact, the process-based model has great appeal because it
“proposes an elegant set of causal relationships between procedural justice, legiti-
macy, and compliance with the law and legal authorities” (Johnson et al., 2014,
p. 948). Moreover, the process-based model serves as a counterpoint to deterrence
approaches, which have remained popular with law enforcement agencies (Johnson
et al., 2014; Pryce, 2016a, Sunshine & Tyler, 2003).

Legitimacy of Ghana Police

Immigration research in the United States has become increasingly important because
immigrants’ views of the U.S. police may be tainted by past experiences with and views
Pryce 433

of the criminal justice systems of their home countries (Davies & Fagan, 2012). Thus,
this study also tests Ghanaian immigrants’ views of their home country’s police on their
willingness to empower the U.S. police. If perceptions of the U.S. police are going to
improve in immigrant communities, then scholars and police agencies should make
concerted efforts to understand these immigrants’ views of their home countries’ police.

Risk of Sanctioning and Effectiveness

Traditional policing methods tend to emphasize the instrumental model, which creates
credible risks in the minds of community members that they would be arrested and
punished if they violate the criminal code (Bowers & Robinson, 2012; Meares, 2000).
The instrumental model largely suggests that people obey the police because the ben-
efits of obedience outweigh the costs of not doing so (Tyler et al., 2010). Sunshine and
Tyler (2003) have argued that community members’ willingness to accept and
empower the police may be tied to the ability of the police to create credible sanction-
ing threats in the minds of rule breakers (risk of sanctioning) and to effectively pre-
vent/control crime in the community (effectiveness). Thus, risk and effectiveness are
important variables for assessing willingness to empower the police.
Evidence suggests, however, that the instrumental model of policing is generally
inadequate to explain police empowerment (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003) and cooperation
with police (Tyler et al., 2010). Although police innovations may have led to wide-
spread decreases in crime in U.S. metropolitan areas (Kelling & Coles, 1996;
Silverman, 1999), instrumental factors of policing alone may not account for much of
the policing success seen in the United States in recent decades (Sunshine & Tyler,
2003). Tankebe’s (2009) research in Ghana, where police brutality and police corrup-
tion are rife, demonstrates that police effectiveness may play a more salient role than
normative considerations in eliciting obedience from certain community members,
although Akinlabi (2015) found that procedural justice, not effectiveness, was the
stronger predictor of police legitimacy among Nigerian youth. In his survey of 450
households in Accra, Ghana, Tankebe (2009) found police effectiveness to be the pri-
mary antecedent of cooperation, and that procedural justice, a normative concept, did
not predict cooperation. Because this finding was an anomaly, of sorts, it is important
to replicate Tankebe’s (2009) study in a similar community (in this case, the Ghanaian
immigrant community in the United States). In fact, Mazerolle, Bennett, et al. (2013)
emphasized precisely the need to test Tankebe’s findings in other social and political
contexts when they observed: “Tankebe’s (2009) research demonstrates that proce-
dural justice might not be the fundamental modus operandi for all police in all cultural
contexts—police performance or effectiveness may also be important” (p. 248).

The Present Study

This study used surveys to measure perceptions of the U.S. police in a sample of 304
Ghanaian immigrants based in Alexandria, Virginia. The following research questions
are addressed in the current study:
434 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

Research Question 1: What is the role of procedural justice in Ghanaian immi-

grants’ willingness to empower the U.S. police?
Research Question 2: Does legitimacy influence willingness to empower the
police in this sample of Ghanaian immigrants?
Research Question 3: Do risk of sanctioning and effectiveness influence willing-
ness to empower the U.S. police? And if they do, are these instrumental models
more influential than normative models in the current study?

Answers to these questions would help improve understanding about how immigrant
communities should be effectively policed and would advance the delivery of police
services in sub-Saharan African immigrant communities.

Method
Participants and Procedures
Data were collected via face-to-face surveys1 in the first 2 months of 2014. Each
participant was at least 18 years old, and received $3.00 for participating in the study.
Out of 341 surveys distributed, 304 were completed and returned, for an overall
response rate of 89%. The response rates ranged from a low of 82% at one church to
a high of 100% at three of the eight churches surveyed. Churches were chosen for
data collection for three reasons: (a) Large numbers of this hard-to-reach population
can be found at these locations at specific times, (b) very few other Ghanaian social
organizations suitable for empirical research exist in this particular city, and (c)
Ghanaian churches retain stable membership, which made it possible to collect a
large enough sample for the current study.
Other researchers have used convenience samples in their studies of hard-to-reach
groups in the United States. For example, Wu, Sun, and Smith (2011) used conve-
nience sampling in their study of Chinese immigrants’ views of the police in four U.S.
cities because, like Ghanaians, Chinese immigrants are a hard-to-reach group.
Although random sampling is a preferred method for surveying a population, it is not
always possible to get a large enough sample when attempting to randomly sample a
hard-to-reach group. To garner as much information from as many Chinese immi-
grants as possible, Wu et al. (2011) turned to non-probability (purposive and conve-
nience) sampling techniques to undertake their study, noting that Chinese immigrants
are “highly mobile and hard-to-identify groups” (p. 755). The current study used a
similar sampling strategy because Ghanaians are a hard-to-reach immigrant commu-
nity in the United States (Pryce, 2016a, 2016b).
Because religiosity was not tested in the present study, its effects on perceptions of
the U.S. police among study participants may not be fully known. Nonetheless, prior
research studies point to a significant negative relationship between religiosity and
legitimacy (Napier & Tyler, 2008; Skitka & Mullen, 2002), and other studies found no
significant relationship between the two aforementioned variables (Huq, Tyler, &
Schulhofer, 2011a, 2011b; Tyler et al., 2010). In addition, Huq et al. (2011a) did not
Pryce 435

find a significant relationship between religiosity and cooperation. In their New York
City study assessing Muslim Americans’ perceptions2 of the relationship between
police legitimacy, cooperation with police, and anti-terrorism efforts, Tyler et al.
(2010) did not find a significant relationship between religiosity and general coopera-
tion or a willingness to report threats of terrorism to the police. There was also no
statistically significant relationship between religiosity and legitimacy. Tyler et al.
(2010) thus concluded that “religiosity, cultural differences, and political background
have at best weak connections with cooperation” (p. 369). It is reasonable to argue,
then, that religiosity may not have played a significant role in the study participants’
perceptions of the police.

Sample
The sample included 54% (n = 155) women and 46% (n = 132) men. Participants’ ages
were between 18 to 69 years (M = 40.26, SD = 13.35). Respondents’ annual household
incomes varied greatly, with the majority (82%; n = 214) reporting incomes less than
$50,000. Overall, 27.2% of the participants (n = 71) made less than $20,000; 19.2%
(n = 50) made between $20,000 and $29,999; 21.1% (n = 55) made between $30,000
and $39,999; 14.6% (n = 38) made between $40,000 and $49,999; 13% (n = 34) made
between $50,000 and $74,999; 2.3% (n = 6) made between $75,000 and $99,999; and
2.7% (n = 7) made over $100,000. In terms of educational background, 13.1% (n = 36)
had less than a high school diploma; 35.6% (n = 98) had a high school diploma/equiva-
lency; 22.9% (n = 63) had an associate’s degree; 17.5% (n = 48) had a bachelor’s
degree; and 10.9% (n = 30) had a postgraduate or professional degree. Ninety-five
percent (n = 264) of the participants were born in Ghana to at least one Ghanaian par-
ent; 5% (n = 14) were born outside Ghana to at least one Ghanaian parent. Twenty-
three percent of respondents reported owning their own homes, with 77% indicating
that they were renters. Finally, the survey participants had lived in the United States
between 1 and 44 years, with slightly more than 50% of this number having lived in
the United States for 10 years or fewer.

Variables
Police empowerment. This five-item variable, adapted from Sunshine and Tyler (2003),
was measured using a 4-point Likert-type scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3
= agree, and 4 = strongly agree. The scale was coded so that higher scores reflected
higher levels of empowerment. The items were the following: (a) The police should
have the right to stop and question people on the street; (b) the police should have the
power to decide which areas of the city should receive the most police protection; (c)
because of their training and experience, the police are best able to decide how to deal
with crime in your neighborhood; (d) the police should have the power to do whatever
they think is needed to fight crime; and (e) if we give enough power to the police, they
will be able to effectively control crime. These responses were then combined to cre-
ate a police empowerment index (Cronbach’s α = .793; M = 2.62; SD = .715).
436 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

Legitimacy (obligation and trust). The items used to operationalize obligation to obey
and trust were taken from Tankebe (2009), who refined the scales used by Sunshine
and Tyler (2003). The respondents were asked to indicate their agreement by selecting
an answer to eight items on a 4-point Likert-type scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 =
disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. The scale was coded so that higher scores
reflected higher levels of obligation to obey and trust.

Obligation to obey. The items were the following: (a) You should accept police deci-
sions even if you think they are wrong, (b) you should do what the police tell you to
do even if you don’t understand why the order was given, (c) you should do what the
police tell you to do even if you disagree with the police’s order, and (d) you should
always do what the police tell you to do even if you don’t like the way the police treat
you. These responses were then combined to create an obligation to obey index (Cron-
bach’s α = .877; M = 2.33; SD = .822).

Trust.3 The items were the following: (a) The police in the United States are trust-
worthy, (b) I have confidence in the police in the United States, (c) the police in the
United States are usually honest, and (d) the police in the United States always act
within the law. These responses were then combined to create a trust index (Cron-
bach’s α = .842; M = 2.65; SD = .667).

Procedural justice (quality of treatment and quality of decision making). This construct,
adapted from Reisig et al. (2007), was measured as Quality of Treatment (four ques-
tions) and Quality of Decision Making (four questions). The following 4-point Likert-
type scale—1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree—was
used to measure this independent variable. The scale was coded so that higher scores
reflected higher levels of quality of treatment and quality of decision making. These
responses were then combined to create a procedural justice index (Cronbach’s α =
.835; M = 2.65; SD = .62).

Quality of treatment. The items for quality of treatment were the following: (a) The
police treat people with respect, (b) the police treat people fairly, (c) the police respect
people’s rights, and (d) the police are courteous to the people they come into contact with.

Quality of decision making. The items for quality of decision making were the fol-
lowing: (a) The police make decisions based upon facts, (b) the police explain their
decisions to the people they deal with, (c) the police make decisions based on their
own personal opinions (reverse scored), and (d) the police consider the views of the
people involved before making their decisions.

Legitimacy of Ghana Police. This four-item variable, adapted from Tankebe (2009), was
measured using a 4-point Likert-type scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 =
agree, and 4 = strongly agree. The scale was coded so that higher scores reflected
higher levels of legitimacy of Ghana police. The items were the following: (a) the
Pryce 437

Ghana police are trustworthy, (b) I have confidence in the Ghana police, (c) the Ghana
police are usually honest, and (d) the Ghana police always act within the law. These
responses were then combined to create a legitimacy of Ghana police index (Cron-
bach’s α = .935; M = 1.91; SD = .828).

Effectiveness. Effectiveness4 by the police in fighting crime was measured using a

4-point Likert-type scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 =
strongly agree. The scale was coded so that higher scores reflected higher levels of
effectiveness. The six items were the following: (a) The police are effective at control-
ling gang violence, (b) the police are effective at controlling drugs, (c) the police are
effective at controlling gun violence, (d) the police are effective at controlling bur-
glary, (e) the police respond quickly to calls for assistance from victims of crime, and
(f) the police are effective at assisting victims of crime. These questions were then
combined to create an effectiveness index (Cronbach’s α = .919; M = 3.10; SD = .665).

Risk of sanctioning. The following six items, adapted from Sunshine and Tyler (2003),
were measured on a 4-point Likert-type scale—1 = very unlikely, 2 = unlikely, 3 =
likely, and 4 = very likely—to measure the independent variable of risk. The scale was
coded so that higher scores reflected higher levels of risk. The items were the follow-
ing: (a) If I park my car illegally, I expect to get caught and punished; (b) if I illegally
dispose of trash, I expect to get caught and punished; (c) if I make noise at night, I
expect to get caught and punished; (d) if I speed or break traffic laws, I expect to get
caught and punished; (e) if I purchase stolen items on the street, I expect to get caught
and punished; and (f) if I use drugs such as marijuana and cocaine in public places, I
expect to get caught and punished. These responses were then combined to create a
risk index (Cronbach’s α = .934; M = 3.02; SD = .86).

Control variables. Past studies have used demographic variables in the study of percep-
tions of the police (see, for example, Brunson, 2007; Gau, Corsaro, Stewart, &
Brunson, 2012), including immigrant-specific control variables of place of birth and
length of stay in the United States (Pryce, 2016a), because they help lessen the bias
associated with missing variables. Some demographic variables that have received
inadequate empirical attention include whether a person is foreign born or native born
(Wu et al., 2011) and length of stay in the United States (Pryce, 2016a). As a result,
place of birth (born in the United States/elsewhere or born in Ghana) and length of stay
in the United States were included as demographic variables in the current study.
Overall, the following control variables were tested in the current study:

1. Sex: Females = 0, Males = 1.

2. Age: Measured in years.
3. Place of birth: Born in Ghana to at least one Ghanaian parent = 0; Born else-
where to at least one Ghanaian parent = 1.
4. Educational level: This was an ordinal measure: (1) less than high school, (2)
high school diploma/equivalency, (3) associate’s degree, (4) bachelor’s degree,
438 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

(5) postgraduate or professional degree (e.g., PhD holder, lawyer, medical

doctor).
5. Homeownership: Renter = 0, Homeowner = 1.
6. Income: Adapted from Tyler and Wakslak (2004), income was recoded into
five categories: Less than $20,000; $20,000 to $29,999; $30,000 to $39,999;
$40,000 to $49,999; $50,000 or more.
7. Length of stay in the United States: Measured as a continuous variable, this
variable captured the participants’ length of stay in the United States.

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the variables.

Ongoing Debate About Conceptualization of Legitimacy

Legitimacy remains an important concept in policing studies, but researchers have
begun to question its antecedents in empirical studies (Johnson et al., 2014; Reisig
et al., 2007; Tankebe, 2009, 2013). When the data for the current project were col-
lected, legitimacy was operationalized as obligation to obey and trust (see Sunshine &
Tyler, 2003; Tankebe, 2009; Tyler, 1990; Wolfe, Nix, Kaminski, & Rojek, 2015),
although vigorous debates currently exist about the best way to operationalize legiti-
macy, with no particular operationalization currently considered a consensus approach
(Akinlabi, 2015; Bottoms & Tankebe, 2012; Cherney & Murphy, 2011; Hough,
Jackson, & Bradford, 2013; Johnson et al., 2014; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tankebe,
2013). More recently, some studies used only “obligation to obey the law (and the
police) scales” (Tankebe, Reisig, & Wang, 2016, p. 11) to measure legitimacy (Kochel
et al., 2013), whereas other studies used moral alignment and obligation to obey as
components of legitimacy (Jackson et al., 2012).
Touching on the current debate about how best to conceptualize legitimacy, Johnson
et al. (2014) noted that Tyler considers procedural justice an antecedent of legitimacy,
whereas Tankebe (2013) considers procedural justice a component of legitimacy.
Furthermore, Tyler considers trust and obligation to be components of legitimacy (see,
for example, Sunshine & Tyler, 2003), but Tankebe considers obligation to obey a
consequence of legitimacy. These differing conceptualizations of legitimacy would
lead to different results, and hence different conclusions.
Although the current study does not specifically evaluate the different conceptual-
izations of legitimacy, the aforementioned studies point to the need to examine the
factor loadings of trust and obligation to obey in the current study. The use of factor
analysis is also important because it underpins the suitability, or otherwise, of using
obligation to obey as an independent variable in the current study. To this end, princi-
pal component analysis (PCA)5 was used to observe the component loadings for trust
and obligation to obey. The results of the factor analysis show that the Kaiser-Meyer-
Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was .824 (Kaiser, 1970, 1974), and Bartlett’s
Test of Sphericity reached statistical significance (p < .05) (Bartlett, 1954), which
confirmed the appropriateness of the data for this type of analysis (Hutcheson &
Sofronniou, 1999; Pallant, 2010). Horn’s parallel analysis (HPA) was used to further
Pryce 439

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of the Variables.

Items Responses Range M SD

Effectiveness
The police are effective at controlling gang 284 1-4 3.15 0.784
violence.
The police are effective at controlling drugs. 282 1-4 3.02 0.789
The police are effective at controlling gun 280 1-4 2.99 0.844
violence.
The police are effective at controlling 274 1-4 3.07 0.807
burglary.
The police are effective at responding to 282 1-4 3.20 0.788
calls for assistance from victims of crime.
The police are effective at assisting victims 282 1-4 3.10 0.762
of crime.
Risk of sanctioning
If I park my car illegally, I expect to get 285 1-4 3.04 0.926
caught and punished.
If I illegally dispose of trash, I expect to get 281 1-4 2.86 0.976
caught and punished.
If I make noise at night, I expect to get 282 1-4 2.83 0.932
caught and punished.
If I speed or break traffic laws, I expect to 280 1-4 3.16 0.941
get caught and punished.
If I purchase stolen items on the street, I 279 1-4 2.92 1.095
expect to get caught and punished.
If I use drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, I 281 1-4 3.10 1.153
expect to get caught and punished.
Trust
The police are trustworthy. 292 1-4 2.78 0.822
I have confidence in the police. 286 1-4 2.74 0.818
The police are usually honest. 281 1-4 2.51 0.802
The police always act within the law. 284 1-4 2.61 0.828
Obligation to obey
You should accept police decisions even if 288 1-4 2.18 0.946
you think they are wrong.
You should do what the police tell you to do 286 1-4 2.33 0.986
even if you don’t understand why the order
was given.
You should do what the police tell you to do 287 1-4 2.40 0.977
even if you disagree with the police’s order.
You should always do what the police tell 287 1-4 2.43 0.947
you to do even if you don’t like the way the
police treat you.
Procedural justice (quality of treatment)
The police treat people with respect. 294 1-4 2.70 0.793
The police treat people fairly. 289 1-4 2.46 0.873
(Continued)
440 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

Table 1. (continued)
Items Responses Range M SD
The police respect people’s rights. 286 1-4 2.75 0.816
The police are courteous to people they 286 1-4 2.87 0.773
come into contact with.
Procedural justice (quality of decision making)
The police make decisions based upon facts. 291 1-4 2.82 0.770
The police explain their decisions to the 284 1-4 2.82 0.742
people they deal with.
The police make decisions based on their 290 1-4 2.35 0.860
own personal opinions.a
The police consider the views of the people 287 1-4 2.63 0.863
involved before making their decisions.
Legitimacy of Ghana police
The Ghana police are trustworthy. 285 1-4 1.90 0.896
I have confidence in the Ghana police. 280 1-4 1.99 0.948
The Ghana police are usually honest. 280 1-4 1.87 0.872
The Ghana police always act within the law. 282 1-4 1.92 0.905
Police empowerment
The police should have the right to stop and 290 1-4 2.44 1.025
question people on the street.
The police should have the power to decide 287 1-4 2.23 1.006
which areas of the city should receive the
most police protection.
Because of their training and experience, the 288 1-4 2.92 0.872
police are best able to decide how to deal
with crime in your neighborhood.
The police should have the power to do 288 1-4 2.74 0.995
whatever they think is needed to fight crime.
If we give enough power to the police, they 288 1-4 2.76 0.926
will be able to effectively control crime.
aReverse coded.

test the results of the PCA, as HPA typically provides some of the most accurate results
in factor analysis (Matsunaga, 2010). The results show that, among Ghanaian immi-
grants in the United States, obligation loaded disparately from trust, with the subscales
explaining 44.3% and 26.2% of the variance, respectively (see Table 2).

Correlations Among the Variables

There was a high correlation of .879 between the trust and procedural justice items,
which points to the absence of discriminant validity between the variables (see, for
example, Johnson et al., 2014; Maguire & Johnson, 2010). In others words, while trust
and procedural justice are conceptually distinct, they were empirically indistinct in the
Pryce 441

Table 2. Principal Component Analysis of the Scales of Obligation to Obey and Trust.

Item Factor 1 Factor 2

Obligation to obey (α = .877)
1. You should accept police decisions even if you think .757
they are wrong.
2. You should do what the police tell you to do even if .885
you don’t understand why the order was given.
3. You should do what the police tell you to do even if .904
you disagree with the police’s order.
4. You should always do what the police tell you to do .863
even if you don’t like the way the police treat you.
Trust in the police (α = .842)
1. The police are trustworthy. .823
2. I have confidence in the police. .867
3. The police are usually honest. .816
4. The police always act within the law. .776
Variance explained 44.3 26.2

Note. N = 304. Only factor loadings >.40 are displayed. Rotation method: Oblimin with Kaiser
normalization.

current study. According to Maguire and Johnson (2010), highly correlated factors
should be combined into a composite index to avoid the problem of poor discriminant
validity, especially when the correlation exceeds .85 (see also Brown, 2006; Gau, 2011).
Because procedural justice, trust, and obligation to obey are all normative concepts, and
because the first of the three research questions was designed to test the effect of proce-
dural justice on willingness to empower the police, trust was dropped from the model
in order to assess the effects of procedural justice and other variables on willingness to
empower the police. With trust removed from the table, the largest correlation value of
.536 in Table 3 was now between effectiveness and procedural justice.

Analytic Strategy
Based on the observed correlations among the constructs and the results obtained from
PCA, obligation to obey6 was used as the sole measure of legitimacy in the regression
models. Due to the limitations of correlation results, all the variables in this study were
subjected to ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses. The use of regression
analyses to test all three regression models (shown in Table 4) accomplished two
things: (a) to help determine the relative effect of each independent variable on will-
ingness to empower the police and (b) to help establish the fact that each independent
variable had an effect on willingness to empower the police that was independent of
the effects of other independent variables (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). None of the cor-
relations between the dependent and independent variables exceeded .70 (Pallant,
2010), so all the variables were retained for analysis.
442 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

Table 3. Bivariate Correlation Results, Minus Trust.

Scale items 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Procedural Justice 1
2. Risk .146* 1
3. Legitimacy Ghana .228** −.013 1
4. Obligation .232** −.052 .082 1
5. Effectiveness .536** .093 .076 .097 1
6. Empowerment .485** .081 .173** .531** .341** 1

*Significant at the .05 level. **Significant at the .01 level.

Results
Normative Judgments I
Table 4 presents results from three OLS regression models. In Model 1, the effects of
procedural justice and the control variables (gender, age, place of birth, length of stay
in the United States, educational attainment, homeownership status, and annual
income) on willingness to empower the police were analyzed. Procedural justice was
significantly related to empowerment (β = .468, p < .001). Thus, when more Ghanaian
immigrants perceive the police as more procedurally fair, they were more willing to
empower the police in their community. None of the control variables were statisti-
cally significantly related to police empowerment in this model. The model explained
27% of the variation in willingness to empower the U.S. police.

Normative Judgments II
In Model 2, the individual effects of all of the normative judgments (procedural jus-
tice, obligation to obey, and legitimacy of Ghana police) and control variables on
willingness to empower the police were analyzed. Procedural justice was, once again,
significantly related to empowerment of the police (β = .351, p < .001), although obli-
gation to obey was a stronger predictor of willingness to empower the police (β = .450,
p < .001) than procedural justice was. In other words, the greater Ghanaian immi-
grants’ sense of obligation to obey and the more they perceive the U.S. police to be
procedurally fair, the more they were willing to empower the U.S. police. The legiti-
macy of Ghana police was not significantly related to willingness to empower the
police. Gender was significantly related to empowerment (β = −.116, p < .05), but
other demographic variables were not. The result means that Ghanaian males were less
willing to empower the U.S. police than their female counterparts. This model
explained 45% of the variation in police empowerment.

Instrumental Judgments
In Model 3, the instrumental factors of effectiveness and risk (see Sunshine & Tyler,
2003; Tankebe, 2009) were introduced into the regression model, alongside all the
Pryce 443

Table 4. Predictors of Empowerment of U.S. Police Among Sample of Ghanaian

Immigrants.

Independent variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Normative judgments I
Procedural justice and control variables
Gender −.069 −.116** −.110**
(.088) (.077) (.077)
Age .077 .071 .062
(.003) (.050) (.003)
Place of birth −.067 .053 −.069
(.113) (.116) (.114)
Length of stay .002 .004 .005
(.006) (.006) (.006)
Education .035 .020 .036
(.033) (.034) (.033)
Homeownership .039 .061 .044
(.089) (.091) (.090)
Annual income −.069 −.073 −.085
(.029) (.029) (.029)
Procedural justice .468*** .351*** .270***
(.068) (.063) (.074)
Normative judgments II
Obligation .450*** .461***
(.047) (.047)
Legitimacy of .046 .054
Ghana police (.045) (.045)
Instrumental judgments
Effectiveness .127**
(.065)
Risk .059
(.043)
R2 .273 .451 .466

Note. N = 286. Entries are standardized coefficients, and standard errors are in parentheses.
**p < .05. ***p < .001.

normative and control variables. Yet again, obligation to obey was statistically signifi-
cantly related to willingness to empower the police (β = .461, p < .001), followed by
procedural justice (β = .270, p < .001) and police effectiveness (β = .127, p < .05).
Once again, the legitimacy of the Ghana police was not statistically significantly
related to willingness to empower the police. Also, risk was not significantly related to
willingness to empower the police in the final model. In this model, gender was, once
again, the only control variable that was significantly related to willingness to empower
the police (β = −.110, p < .05). In other words, Ghanaian males were less willing to
444 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

empower the U.S. police than their female counterparts. The model explained 47% of
the variation in police empowerment.

Discussion and Conclusion

The prominence of the process-based model of policing (Akinlabi, 2015; Sunshine &
Tyler, 2003; Tankebe, 2009; Tyler et al., 2010) has engendered, in recent years, discus-
sions in the criminological literature about the relative impacts of normative and
instrumental models of policing in communities across the United States and else-
where. While some researchers have found normative factors to exert a greater influ-
ence than instrumental factors on policing success (Akinlabi, 2015; Sunshine & Tyler,
2003), others have found the exact opposite (Sargeant et al., 2014; Tankebe, 2009).
These disparate results may mean that the relevance of either model may be context
specific (Mazerolle, Bennett, et al., 2013; Tankebe, 2009). More importantly, these
differing results point to different “value systems” for different communities in their
assessments of the police.
It appears that the findings of the present study provide answers to the research
questions put forth: Procedural justice remains an important antecedent of willing-
ness to empower the police; obligation to obey influences Ghanaian immigrants’ will-
ingness to empower the police; and effectiveness, but not risk of sanctioning,
influences willingness to empower the police, although effectiveness exerts a weaker
influence on willingness to empower the police than procedural justice and obligation
to obey do. Thus, in this study, it appears that normative models trump instrumental
models of policing as far as Ghanaian immigrants’ willingness to empower the police
is concerned. The results of the current study, which intersect the results of the pro-
cess-based model of policing in the United States (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler
et al., 2010) and Africa (Akinlabi, 2015; Tankebe, 2009), are relevant to how sub-
Saharan African immigrant communities should be policed. Notably, Ghanaian
immigrants’ willingness to empower the police is tied more to procedural fairness
than to police effectiveness. In other words, the process-based model of policing
holds a more important place in this community of Ghanaian immigrants than instru-
mental considerations.
Although it may be true that “focusing police attention on the correlates of crime,
such as concentrated poverty, family disruption, and genetic predisposition, will not
affect offending patterns” (Reisig, Tankebe, & Mesko, 2012, p. 161), emphasizing
normative and/or instrumental models of policing in particular communities, based on
outcomes of specific empirical studies, can reduce crime and disorder in those com-
munities. The current study, like many others, points to the importance of normative
models in engendering successful policing. Nix, Wolfe, Rojeck, and Kaminski (2015)
captured adequately the procedural justice–empowerment nexus when they noted:

[I]f officers fail to be polite or treat citizens . . . disrespectfully, levels of mistrust could
be exacerbated. This has real consequences for police officers because lack of trust breeds
less compliance with the law and officer directives, less cooperative behavior (e.g.,
Pryce 445

offering information relevant to criminal investigations), and less willingness to empower

local police with greater resources. (p. 632)

It is important to restate that effectiveness also predicted police empowerment,

even if on a smaller scale than both obligation to obey and procedural justice. This
finding points to Ghanaian immigrants’ expectation that the police also fight crime
and disorder in order to be empowered. This finding is similar to Tankebe’s (2009)
study in Ghana in which effectiveness, not procedural justice, was the primary ante-
cedent of cooperation with police. In the current study, risk of sanctioning and legiti-
macy of Ghana police did not predict police empowerment. Also, apart from gender,
none of the control variables in the current study had a statistically significant rela-
tionship with empowerment.
Sunshine and Tyler (2003), in their first study prior to the events of 9/11, found that
“empowerment was predicted by perceptions of legitimacy” (p. 526). This finding is
similar to the obligation–empowerment nexus in the current study. Unlike results from
Sunshine and Tyler’s first, pre-9/11 study, however, gender was the only demographic
factor that had a statistically significant impact on police empowerment in the current
study. In their second, post-9/11 study, Sunshine and Tyler found that perceptions of
legitimacy, distributive justice, and risk predicted empowerment. The two researchers
also noted that wealthier, older, and more educated respondents were less likely to
empower the police.
Peripheral to the three main research questions in the present study is how legiti-
macy is conceptualized and measured. Tyler’s process-based model argues that pro-
cedural justice and legitimacy are both conceptually and empirically distinct,
although more recent studies have found that trust (a subcomponent in Tyler’s legiti-
macy scale) has tended to load with procedural justice (quality of treatment and
quality of decision making) when the two variables were subjected to factor analysis
(Johnson et al., 2014; Pryce, 2016a; Tankebe, 2013), and the results were not differ-
ent in the current study. The empirical overlap between procedural justice and trust
calls into question the accuracy of the scales used for measuring both concepts, and
may point to the need for more studies to improve the conceptualization and mea-
surement of these variables.
Tankebe (2009) was the first researcher to study the differential impacts of norma-
tive and instrumental models of policing on perceptions of the police in Ghana. The
current article is also the first research study to examine the discrepant effects of nor-
mative and instrumental models of policing on willingness to empower the U.S. police
in a sub-Saharan African immigrant community. As more studies are carried out in
different geopolitical contexts, the findings would help point policing in the right
direction, as effective policing cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach.

Limitations
First, the current study examined willingness to empower the police in the eyes of
Ghanaians based in only one U.S. city, so one must be cautious in generalizing the
446 Criminal Justice Policy Review 30(3)

results to Ghanaians in other U.S. cities, as well as to the overall immigrant population
in the United States. Second, a conclusion cannot be drawn from cross-sectional data
that obligation to obey and procedural justice lead to police empowerment, or vice
versa (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). Longitudinal studies should be used in the future if
the goal is to examine causality.

Policy Implications
This article’s findings point to important policy considerations. First, effectiveness has
been shown to be significantly related to empowerment in the present study. This
result means that this sample of Ghanaian immigrants may have viewpoints that mir-
ror the viewpoints of Ghanaians domiciled in Ghana, where police brutality and cor-
ruption are widespread (Tankebe, 2008). Thus, the U.S. police would be empowered
by this immigrant group if the police are both fair in their interactions with group
members and effective in preventing and reducing crime.
Second, the police should have open lines of communication with the Ghanaian
immigrant community, in order to increase trust and cooperation. The police should
even go further by asking leaders of the Ghanaian immigrant community to provide
suggestions for policy making. As officers become more aware of and familiar with
the norms and mores of the Ghanaian immigrant community, the latter would be more
willing to cooperate with and empower the police. Moreover, by making the effort to
interact with one immigrant community, the police will likely extend such courtesies
to other communities, thereby increasing the likelihood that several other immigrant
communities would offer support to and empower the police, important ingredients for
securing communities across the United States.

Acknowledgments
My deepest gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their time and recommendations. I also
wish to thank the following for their support over the years: Devon Johnson, David Wilson, and
James Willis (all in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at George Mason University)
and Edward Maguire, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
1. Church (1999) has shown that, compared with a non-incentive condition, incentives yield
higher response rates in telephone and face-to-face surveys.
Pryce 447

2. Of those who participated in the study, 19% were born in the United States, whereas 81%
were born outside the United States.
3. Trust is defined as institutional or motive-based (Tyler, 2005). Institutional trust repre-
sents community members’ beliefs about the honesty of police officers (Tyler, 2005), and
whether these officers are invested in the well-being of the communities they are sworn
to serve. Motive-based trust is linked to community members’ beliefs that “police offi-
cers have benevolent and caring intentions when they deal with the public and make a
good faith effort to respond to the needs and concerns of the public” (Tyler, 2005, p. 325).
Institutional trust, generally captured in public opinion polls (Levi & Stoker, 2000), is the
strand of trust being assessed in the present study.
4. The items were adapted from Sunshine and Tyler (2003), but a different type of Likert scale
was used to measure this variable.
5. Tankebe (2009) and Wolfe et al. (2015) also used PCA to test the factor loadings of trust
and obligation to obey in their research studies.
6. Obligation to obey was appropriate as an independent variable because it was not highly
correlated with any other independent variable.

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Author Biography
Daniel K. Pryce, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at North
Carolina Central University. His primary research interests include police–citizen relations,
police–immigrant relations, terrorism in a post-9/11 environment, innovations in policing,
research methods, and community corrections.