Applying Procedural Justice to People with I/DD

Voicemail

00:00

Welcome to The Beat—a podcast series from the COPS Office and the Department of Justice. Featuring 

interviews with experts from a varied field of disciplines, The Beat provides law enforcement with the 

latest developments and trending topics in community policing.

Today both of our guests are joining us by phone.

Jennifer Donelan

00:19

Hello everyone, and welcome to The Beat. Thank you for joining us. Today we're going to be talking 

about applying procedural justice to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And we are 

very honored to have on the line with us, joining us by phone, Chief Will Johnson. He is the police chief 

of the Arlington, Texas police department, and we have Professor Amy Watson. She's a professor at the 

Jane Adams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Thank you both so much for 

joining us.

Chief, I’d like to start with you. We're talking about applying procedural justice to people with 

intellectual and developmental disabilities. And I think its most important that our listeners understand, 

first, what is procedural justice, and why do you have an interest in it?

Chief Will Johnson

01:05

Procedural justice is a research outcome from Dr. Tom Tyler, in which he was able to prove that most of 

society is invested in the fairness of the process more so than the outcome of the process. So the pillars 

of procedural justice really center around the topics of fairness, transparency, where the process allows 

participants to have a voice and that the process produces a product that's unbiased. And when those 

elements are present, as people are having interactions with one another, particularly when they're 

having interactions with law enforcement, they care more about the process than they do the 

outcomes. Dr. Tom Tyler's research suggests that when people believe in the process, it will actually 

produce increased voluntary compliance with the law.

Donelan

01:55

And I could imagine as Chief of Police it almost goes without explanation as to why you're so interested 

in this process.
Johnson

02:02

It gives us a framework by which we can approach complex social topics, many of which are 

generational and have systematic issues throughout society. In these cases, solutions may have become 

elusive to us as a community.

But if we approach it in a procedurally fair and just perspective, we can have the best possible outcomes 

on the micro scale of the individual encounter and also on a macro scale for the community as we try to 

create and promote social change.

Donelan

02:37

Perfect, thank you. Professor Watson, your thoughts.

Professor Amy Watson

02:40

What I found in the literature, and in my own research, is that when people are vulnerable or occupy a 

marginalized status, procedural justice is particularly important. So, while it's important for all police 

interactions with the public, but for more vulnerable populations, how people feel they're being treated 

by the authorities is particularly important, because it . . . if someone's feeling vulnerable and unsafe, 

they're really going to look to the person in power, with power in the situation for cues to how safe they 

are. So, here, it's really important in these situations.

Additionally, in these situations, providing the opportunity for the person to have voice, and to explain 

their side of the story, showing respect for the person, and treating them with dignity, showing concern 

and fairness really helps that person feel less vulnerable and safe to comply with what the officer needs 

them to do, and to get a better outcome for everybody.

Donelan

03:32

It's going back to exactly as you were explaining, it's the process. Was the process fair, was I treated just 

like everyone else’s? That, regardless of the outcome if I can look to that and depend on that then it's a 

positive experience.

Chief, do you have an example or case that influenced you in your interest in this topic, this process of 

procedural justice?

Johnson

03:52

Absolutely. I've been in policing for over 24 years, and I've been a student and an aspiring teacher of 

procedural justice for about 10 years now. I can remember vividly being in a meeting with Dr. Tom Tyler 
as he presented his research to our command staff. And there were two graphs that he projected on the 

screen. On one graph was crime in America over the last 60 years, and it showed a sharply decreasing 

rate in terms of a drop in crime in the United States. I remember looking at that slide, and as a police 

officer you feel a sense of accomplishment that you have contributed to society and that you have 

reduced crime, not only in your community, but nationally. And it, and it really gave you a sense of 

satisfaction.

The second slide was community satisfaction of the police and their satisfaction with the delivery of 

police services. And as he compared these two slides over the same time period, in which we were 

looking at the decreasing crime rate and also community satisfaction in the police, the overall 

satisfaction of the community of the police was relatively unchanged. So what that told me was people 

were not drawing their evaluation of police services as it was connected to the crime rate. Now, that's 

not to say that people aren't interested in the crime rate, but they're generally more interested in 

incidents of crime, particularly as it relates to their proximity. In other words, people care about crime 

that's occurring closest to them or involving them. And also, it was an epiphany to understand that the 

measurement by which we, the police, were measuring ourselves was not the measurement that the 

community was measuring the police and their effectiveness.

And by transitioning our, the police department's, measurement to one of procedural justice, where we 

were evaluating our conduct based on the service delivery as reconciled with the pillars of procedural 

justice rather than outcomes, we started to improve community satisfaction and confidence in the 

police.

Donelan

06:03

It's police community relations, and it is at the forefront right now. Professor Watson, you’re focusing 

you work on this topic. What influenced you?

Watson

06:11

Early in my career, I was a probation officer and I worked on the specialist mental health team. I had 

many clients with serious mental illness that had regular contact and, often times, unfortunate contact 

with the police. And on some occasions, my clients were injured and, on a few occasions, the officers 

were injured, as well. So I got interested in thinking about what we can do, so that these encounters go 

better for everybody. Ah, fast forward and, as I started working on my program of research, one of the 

first studies that I did involved talking to people with serious mental illness about the police encounters 

that they had had, and how they experienced them.

I remember one woman, in particular, who described an encounter she had with an officer that ended 

with her being arrested. When she talked about the encounter really positively, because the officer was 

respectful. He listened to her side of the story, and he explained to her what was going to happen. Then 

she talked about another interaction where she could have been arrested, but wasn't. That officer was 
very rude and dismissive and she was really unhappy with the experience and how she was treated, and 

really pretty angry about the encounter. So it became clear that it really did matter how officers treat 

people, and that there's things that we can do to help officers, in terms of improving those encounters 

and supporting better outcomes for everybody involved.

Donelan

07:28

Professor Watson, how are the majority of police encounters experienced by people with mental illness, 

and can you tell us why that's significant?

Watson

07:37

So what we found, in talking to people, is that first of all, people with mental illness have encounters 

with police for the same reasons that other people do. They may also have encounters related to their 

mental illness or mental health crisis. So it runs the gamut from just your mundane, regular encounters 

to encounters where their mental illness is more of a component. But what was really consistent is that, 

in the encounters that they had with the police, they felt very vulnerable. They were frightened and

described these encounters as really difficult interactions. That’s important to understand, because if 

they're feeling fearful, that can impact how they respond to an officer. It may make . . . get more 

difficult for them to comply with what the officer is asking them to do.

And the flip side, I've done a lot of work talking to police officers. And while they won't tell you, 

specifically, that they're afraid in these encounters, they do talk about encounters with people with 

mental illness as being more dangerous, and being really unpredictable. So if you have a situation where 

you have both parties are expecting it to be very dangerous, and unpredictable, you can almost create 

the circumstances that you're trying to avoid where it does become a dangerous encounter for 

everybody involved.

Donelan

08:48

So the lessons that you've taken from that, and as I'm listening to you, is that we can take their 

experiences, use this process, make sure that we are treating everyone fairly and the same, and apply 

that to people with intellectual developmental disabilities.

Chief, in listening to this, can you talk about why it's so important to apply procedural justice to 

encounters with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities?
Johnson

09:13

Well, at the highest levels, people with intellectual developmental disabilities are stakeholders in the 

community just like everybody else, and we need to provide them with exemplary service in any and all 

manner in which are available to us. But the more complex answer is police officers deal with a variety 

of individuals who call police for help. And if we just look at the totality of the people that officers come 

in contact with and become involved with, it includes people that are criminals, people that are 

antisocial, people that have mental illnesses and are in mental crisis, substance abusers. It's critically 

important to understand that sometimes police come into contact with individuals that represent all of 

these different sub-groups, including the sub-group of those with intellectual development disabilities. 

So I think it's important to throw in a couple additional points out there as it relates to this challenge 

that police officers face because we know that 25% of all officer-involved shootings involve somebody 

with a mental illness. We know that if you have a mental illness, you're 16 times more likely to be shot 

by the police during a police interaction. And so it's absolutely in the back of an officer's mind as they're 

approaching individuals and trying to determine just who exactly they are interacting with, we have 

people that are interacting with officers that are consuming and abusing substances. Certainly the focus 

of this conversation today is on intellectual and development disabilities. And we come in contact with 

all of those people in the absolute environmental conditions in which cops are delivering services out in 

the community.

So as an officer, you're trying to process all these different possibilities across the spectrum of

possibilities that you might be confronting, and you're trying to process it in the speed in which you're 

involved in the encounter. In other words, the speed of life if you will, rather than through the hindsight 

of reflection after the encounter is over. And so the ability for us to slow down when possible the 

encounter, the ability to have a framework by which we can try to provide procedural fairness, gives an 

officer the opportunity to access all the different possibilities that they are encountering, so that they're 

not totally looking at one set of data, but all the data that's available to them. That they're trying to take 

it all in, all the data points, to make the most informed decision that they possibly can and that these 

decisions are procedurally fair and responsive to how they are projecting themselves to the community 

in terms of how the community feels like they're being treated in the interaction.

Donelan

12:09

Sure, and I am always amazed at the thought processes that officers have to go through in literally the 

blink of an eye as they are approaching an individual or responding to a scene. Does this framework of 

practicing procedural justice, does it help them, you know, in those finite moments?
Johnson

12:26

I believe absolutely that it does. Because as officers are confronted with all of these different scenarios, 

we know from our experience and from the literature that sometimes aggressive demeanor is not 

aggression. But an officer also knows that sometimes aggressive demeanor is absolutely unlawful 

aggression, and they have to be able to respond appropriately to both. Which means that as they are 

controlling these scenes for everyone's safety and they're trying to problem solve and help people in 

crisis, that this framework of procedural justice helps them with the ebb and flow of the encounter, if 

you will, in terms of exerting their authority in some instances but also pulling back or withdrawing their 

authority in others. Allowing individuals an opportunity to interact with them safely as the 

circumstances demand, all the while maintaining control for officer safety purposes and also for the 

safety of all individuals on scene.

So as officers are both exerting their authority to control the scene and also diminishing their authority 

to de-escalate the scene, procedural justice helps them to provide a framework on which they can not 

only effectively provide police services, but also allow the individual to feel that they had a voice in the 

process. 

Donelan

13:53

Thank you, well said. Professor Watson, could you explain in practical terms the five procedural justice 

tools that officers can use, and how it directly relates to people with intellectual and developmental 

disabilities?

Watson

14:06

Sure, I think one thing officers could do is to make sure to treat people with dignity and respect. So 

regardless of how bad a day the officer's having, how difficult the situation is, it's important that they 

remember that the person in front of them is a human being and deserves the same dignity and respect 

as anybody else. And also recognizing that the person in crisis, even though they may seem very 

agitated, they'll pay attention to how their treated, and it will matter to how they respond. And other 

tools, basically, to allow the person opportunity to share their side of the story, so to give them voice 

and allow them to be heard. Making sure that the officer reflects back to that person, to the effect that I 

hear what you're saying. So even if the officer doesn't agree or can't do what the person is hoping the 

officer will do, the officer can, at least, let them know that they're listening and they hear what the 

person is saying and understand.

Another thing an officer can do is to provide some transparency. So explaining two things to the person 

that, perhaps, this is what I need you to do. This is what I need to do, and this is why. Very importantly, 

giving the person time to process that information. So, if anybody who's in crisis, or agitated, may have 

more difficult responding to what an officer is asking them to do, but if you add various communication 
barriers, or someone's acutely symptomatic, that makes it even more difficult for them to process the 

request and comply. So they're not responding to the officer might not be unwillingness to comply, it 

could just be that they're still processing the information and coming up with a response. So it's 

important for officers to recognize that, and understand that, and in addition to making sure that 

they're really clear about what's going to happen and why, but also allowing the person time to process 

the information and to be able to respond.

Another thing is to make it clear to the person that the officer actually has their well-being in mind, and 

that they have concern about the person. It's always good if it's genuine, people notice that. So, even if 

the officer has to make decisions, or asks the person to do things that the person doesn't want to do, if 

they feel that the officer is actually concerned about their well-being, they may feel a bit safer and 

cooperate with the officer. So that's really important. And, I think, often times the things that we see, in 

some of the trainings, specific to CIT training, or other trainings, to help officers better respond to 

people with mental illness, or intellectual and developmental disabilities, is providing officers with some 

contact with people, with those disabilities so that they can begin to build some empathy and build that 

compassion, so when they do have an encounter, they really can connect with that person and show 

genuine concern.

Donelan

17:01

What I hear both of you saying as a theme as we've been holding this discussion, is the element of time. 

And the focus on trying to slow it downso that you can get these things done. Chief, from a 

management perspective, what advice would you give to law enforcement executives on implementing 

procedural justice in their department so that they're working to ensure people with disabilities are 

included in procedural justice efforts?

Johnson

17:27

I think it's really important for police chiefs as they implement procedural justice as a reflection of the 

core values of their department to first focus internally. You have to be able to provide procedural 

justice as an organization to your employees, as an act of the demonstration of how you want them to 

treat the community when they're out in the field serving the public. And once you started this 

conversation internally and you started the organizational transformation about the value of procedural 

justice internally, your employees can see it within their own organization and then it is more readily 

executable out in the community.

Procedural justice as it's executed in the community serves as a great value because it's not only 

applicable on the individual encounters, but it's applicable to the vast spectrum of challenges that 

officers face as they come in contact with a diverse community that they serve. Today, we're talking 

about a certain group of individuals, but procedural justice has applications across all the different lines 

of people within the community; people of different races, of all different socioeconomic classes. 
Because at its core, this is the most inherent trait that people in the community desire as the 

fundamental concept of fairness. I do absolutely agree with the previous comments about the sincerity 

in which we serve the public. People can see that.

And I would remind executives that while we're training our staff and when we're dealing with 

somebody in crisis, even those that may not be receptive to de-escalation tactics and to the concepts of 

procedural justice, we should never forget that there are other stakeholders in the community that are 

watching these interactions. And even when we're dealing with the somebody in crisis not willing to 

receive our de-escalation or allow us to avoid a use of force encounter, the larger community is 

watching how we interact with these individuals and they are making a judgment statement based on 

the tactics that we use and the professionalism by which we conduct our business. Procedural justice 

gives us an opportunity to project to these observers that are not involved in these encounters exactly 

what our core values are.

Donelan

19:55

And now more than ever we are in a day in age where the outside community is able to observe 

interactions between law enforcement and individuals, so I think that's a great point. Professor Watson, 

I will ask you, do you have any last minute thoughts for our audience?

Watson

20:08

I guess my only comment is that even where officers really apply procedural justice and, perhaps, in this 

situation, the person may not, initially, be responding to it. But I think they're still aware of how they're 

being treated and that may pay forwards to the next interaction that they have with the police officer. 

Unfortunately, one negative interaction can have more power than a number of positive interactions, so 

the challenge is to really support officers in providing procedurally just treatment of all individuals.

Donelan

20:41

Absolutely, it's a win for everyone involved. Chief, your last thoughts?

Johnson

20:45

We have individuals in our communities that we have given our solemn oath to serve. And we have 

committed to serve them well. This is a vulnerable population, and vulnerable populations represent the 

absolute groups that police officers, most police officers, step forward and raise their right hand and 

said, "I will serve you. I will protect you even when you can't protect yourself. I will get you help when 

you need it. I will make sure that I intervene on your behalf." And so I think from the most noblest 

aspects of policing, this is the reason why people aspire to join police departments. And I think we can 
be motivated by how we serve people with intellectual and development disabilities, and I believe that 

procedural justice is the vehicle by which we can do that.

Donelan

21:42

Thank you so much. Professor Watson, can people contact you regarding this topic? And if so, how 

would you prefer to be contacted?

Watson

21:49

People can contact me by email, either at, acwatson@gmail.com. That's A-C-W-A-T-S-O-N-at-G-MAILdot-COM, or at A-C-W-A-T-S-O-N-at-U-I-C-dot-E-D-U. 

Donelan

22:12

Perfect, thank you. And Chief Will Johnson, how can people contact you regarding this topic, and if so, 

how would you prefer to be contacted?

Johnson

22:20

Absolutely, we're always open and willing to help individuals and organizations, particularly fellow law 

enforcement agencies that are trying to implement procedural justice. We host site visits through the 

COPS Office, site visits with our peer agencies, the desire to see how we've implemented it here in 

Arlington. And anybody that would like to talk to us more about this topic can contact us by looking at 

our contact information on our website, which is W-W-W-ARLINGTON-P-D-dot-ORG.

Donelan

22:54

Arlington P as in Paul, D as in dog, dot-org?

Johnson

22:57

That's correct.
Donelan

22:59

I can't thank you both enough for joining us. Chief Will Johnson of the Arlington, Texas police 

department, and Professor Amy Watson of theJane Adams College of Social Work at the University of 

Illinois in Chicago. And thank you listeners so much for joining us on The Beat. 

Voiceover: The Beat Exit

23:15

The Beat is brought to you by the United States Department of Justice’s COPS Office. The COPS Office 

helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing 

community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. If you have comments 

or suggestions, please email our Response Center at askcopsrc@usdoj.gov, or check out our social 

media on Facebook (www.facebook.com/dojcops), on YouTube (www.youtube.com/c/dojcopsoffice), or 

on Twitter (@copsoffice). Our website is www.cops.usdoj.gov. 

Voiceover: Disclaimer

24:14

The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 

positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, 

products or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of 

Justice, rather the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.