Procedural justice is a crucial factor in building trust for judges, police officers, and other workers representing the law. During court visits, people can feel themselves in the conveyor because of the many cases handled daily. The procedural justice idea states that the way people are treated is even more critical than their case solution. According to the New York Police Department, New York City has the lowest violent and property crime rates of any big city in the United States (2016, p. 1). These statistics surprise, but nothing just happens, every achievement is a result of hard work. It is safe to say that the concept of procedural justice is one of the key components of NYC’s success in the crime and law field.
To understand the organization’s structure, it is essential to know it from the inside. The New York Police Department has more than fifty thousand employees, with almost thirty-five thousand active officers (NYPD, 2022). Twenty-seven and a half thousand are males, which is eighty percent of the whole crew, and nearly seven thousand are women, which is twenty percent (NYPD, 2022). Most of the officers are white, more specifically, there are almost fifteen hundred white employees who constitute forty-three percent of the total number (NYPD, 2022). Ten and a half thousand are Hispanic (thirty-one percent), more than five thousand employees are African American (sixteen percent), three and a half thousand are Asian (ten percent), and twenty-seven of them are American Indian which is less than one percent (NYPD, 2022). The area that New York Police Department protects is about four hundred and seventy thousand square miles.
Procedural justice is not only about results, but also about the quality of people’s experiences. It was tested in prisons, courts, and police stops and “improved public trust and voluntary compliance with the law” as a result (Center for Court Innovation, 2017). This concept contains elements of sociology and organizational and social psychology. It is vital for Police Departments to appreciate the importance of internal and external procedural justice. Internal procedural justice is as important as external and helps officers to deal with stress. As mentioned in the research, “officers who feel they are treated fairly by their departments are better able to implement policies that promote justice” (Quattlebaum et al., 2018, p. 7). It is hard to underestimate the internal procedural justice impact on police workers’ attitudes and readiness to be reasonable under challenging situations they face at work. There are four main components of procedural justice: voice, understanding, respect, and neutrality. People need to feel they are treated equally regardless of gender, race, or age and understand the procedures and their rights. They also need to feel they are being listened to and respected.
One of the New York Police Department’s biggest internal strengths is its strong management team. They focus on the division of tasks to ease the burden on employees. It helps the workers to maintain timing and meet deadlines. The distribution of duties has led to their successful and progressive performance in the city. It can be seen in the distribution of departments. They created Major Case Squad, Mounted Unit, Highway Patrol, Crime Scene Unit, and many more. That demonstrates their ability to delegate and change for the better. Their internal weakness is the lack of diversity in the employees’ composition. The most significant part of police officers is white, as well as the majority of them are male. One of the primary external weaknesses is that they integrated technology for internal use, but could not implement it into their external processes. That reflects on the quality of their services, analysis, and their progress as an outcome. However, their biggest strength is their ability to analyze and change and their understanding of the gap between them and the community, especially minorities.
There are many ways that New York Police Department can go to improve its services. One of them is to continue the process of making the team diverse. That way, people will feel that there are no privileges for people of any race or gender. They can also focus on technology development and direct it to external work issues. The main goal is to maintain trust in the people of New York. Studies show that “while only twelve percent of white respondents said that they worry about being a victim of police brutality, fifty-two percent of black respondents and thirty-eight percent of Hispanic respondents said the same” (NYPD, 2016, p. 3). Unfortunately, there is a lack of trust in certain society groups, but it is fixable by procedural justice.
To conclude, the New York Police Department is doing a good job. However, it is never late to learn and improve their weaknesses and make the strengths they already have even better. Even though New York Department is the best of other big cities in America in terms of property and violent crime, it can continue to develop its service. Procedural justice is crucial for every company or organization that works with people, especially the police.
References
Center for Court Innovation. (2017). What is procedural justice? [Video]. Youtube. Web.
NYPD. (2022). Current NYPD members of service. Web.
NYPD. (2016). Trust: Bridging the police/community divide. Web.
Quattlebaum, M., Meares, T., Tyler, T., Mignouna, D., Niedzielski-Eichner, N., Prince, S. & Waite, C. (2018). Principles of procedurally just policing. Yale Law School. Web.