There is an emerging body of scholarship that suggests that procedural justice plays a significant role in the public’s perception of police legitimacy. Contemporary community standards have increasingly demanded that police departments make fairness one of their highest priorities; however, the concept of procedural justice is more than just treating people with fairness. The concept draws specifically on four defined elements of community-police interactions: (1) community members want to be treated with respect (respect); (2) the public wants to be able to voice their concerns (voice); (3) people want police to act as a neutral third party (neutrality); and (4) the public expects police motives to be trustworthy (trustworthiness).1 While the concept of procedural justice has been explored and evaluated in practice, only one study has evaluated the effectiveness of formal classroom procedural justice training.2
This article gives an overview of the existing literature pertaining to procedural justice and discusses the procedural justice training that took place in Norfolk, Virginia, as part of a larger National Institute of Justice (NIJ) research project, followed by an evaluation of the Norfolk training’s short-term and long-term effects. Action items will also be discussed.3
