Technology and Police Legitimacy

Through a consideration of the use of mobile devices by the police and the public, this chapter explores some of the potential issues raised by the incorporation of technology. What internal challenges should be considered for police organisations? What impact may the expansion of technologically mediated interactions have on public perceptions of police legitimacy? Whilst there is a large volume of work linking procedural justice in face-to-face interactions to legitimacy, we know little about how this operates online. Employing the concept of the ‘abstract police’ (Terpstra et al., The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles, 92(4), 339–359, 2019), we consider the potential impact of technology on legitimacy both internally within police organisations and externally between the police and the public. We consider organisational justice and conceptualise legitimacy as dialogic and relational (Bottoms & Tankebe, Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 102, 119–170, 2012).