Policing in East Jerusalem: The Effect of Police Control and the Confidence of the Public in the Police Forces: A Role for Procedural Justice

This is an exploratory research¹ study that aims to better understand the relationship between East Jerusalem Palestinian residents' perceived police intolerance, legitimacy, and trust, to consequently determine the extent to which procedural justice can influence this relationship positively. Participants were surveyed on a range of topics including their daily contact with police, their perception of law enforcement behavior, their degree of trust in police use of procedural justice and how they believe police treat their ethnic group. We argue that how Jerusalem Palestinians perceive police bias is associated with their level of trust in police. Greater preconceived bias is associated with lower trust in police. In addition, we argue that perceiving police as procedurally just is positively related to trust. Importantly, this study finds a significant interaction effect between perceptions of police bias and procedural justice on Palestinians' trust in the police. Specifically, for those who view police as biased against Palestinians, procedural justice has a very weak but positive effect on trust. For those who hold the view that police are unbiased, perceiving police as generally procedurally just has a stronger positive effect on trust. This interaction effect suggests that perceived bias may shape how East Jerusalem Palestinians interpret police treatment of Palestinians. In the Old City in particular the level of Palestinian trust in the Israeli police has been extremely low.