Procedural Justice Training in Policing: A Systematic Review of the Research Evidence

To capitalise on the growing body of evidence on the effects of ‘procedural justice training’ for police officers, a systematic review is conducted to trace, evaluate, and synthesise all the results of published police procedural justice training tests. Nine rigorous experiments have met the eligibility criteria. Overall, the results suggest that police officers exposed to training programmes on procedural justice perform better than unexposed officers on multiple outcomes. The systematic review highlighted several other key findings. First, training seems to significantly affect a broad range of outcomes. This result is not to say that procedural justice training works universally, as training was found to work differently and unevenly depending on the police officer population type and for distinct policing jobs. For example, the training positively affects specialist policing, such as crime scene investigation and traffic policing, but, in some instances, it has a non-significant effect on experienced frontline field officers. As importantly—and surprisingly—limited effects are found on police recruits, which is where most of the training occurs. These findings are informative, not least because they suggest that a bespoke training package may be needed to cause an effect (however such an effect is measured) but also because there are instances where training does not lead to favourable outcomes: similar scores on procedural justice measures across treatment and control conditions. Areas that are presently short on evidence are highlighted as a guide for future studies in this area.