Program Profile: Procedural Justice Checklist for Suspected Terrorists in a European Country

This is a procedural justice checklist for counterterrorism police officers working in ports of travel in a European country to use when questioning people suspected of terrorism. The program is rated Effective. People interviewed by officers using the checklist reported a statistically significantly greater view of distributive justice, effectiveness of police, obligation to obey the law, and willingness to cooperate with the police, compared with people interviewed by control group officers.

An Effective rating implies that implementing the program is likely to result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals

This intervention consists of a procedural justice checklist for counterterrorism officers to use when interviewing persons suspected of terrorism when they are traveling through ports of travel (specifically in a European country). The goals of the checklist are to limit the risk of improper conduct by counterterrorism officers interviewing persons suspected of terrorism and to improve the perception of the officers by those being interviewed. To do this, the intervention employs the use of a procedural justice checklist that consists of reminders to the officer of different ways to build a trusting relationship with individuals suspected of terrorism.

Program Components/Key Personnel

Counterterrorism officers can operate in a variety of ports, such as air, sea, and train. They monitor passenger movements and operate searches in embarkation and disembarkation areas. The role of counterterrorism officers is to stop and search persons suspected of involvement in the commission, preparation, or instigation of terroristic acts. Counterterrorism officers conduct thousands of interviews each year based on intelligence from counterterrorism agencies and a multitude of investigation tactics, such as behavioral profiling.

When an officer identified a passenger as a potential suspect, the officer would ask the potential suspect to accompany them to a private interview room to be questioned. The officer would then use a paper copy of a procedural justice checklist to guide the interview. The checklist operationalizes four dimensions that express procedural justice in an interaction between the police and public: 1) a citizen’s participation in the proceedings before an authority reaches a decision [voice], 2) neutrality of the authority in its decision, 3) whether the authority showed dignity and respect throughout the interaction, and 4) trustworthy motives (Jonathan–Zamir et al., 2015). Items of the checklist included "Officer expressed interest in receiving information from the individual and obtaining their view," "Officer asked about the individual’s well-being," and "Officer indicated he/she would not make a decision about what to do until s/he had gathered all necessary information" (Unnamed European Nation, 2021).

Study 1

Langley and colleagues (2021) conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the impact that a procedural justice checklist made on various outcomes involving individuals suspected of terrorism. The study was conducted beginning in March 2016 across 21 ports in a European democracy and involved 65 counterterrorism teams. Teams operated in sea, train, and international ports that handled an estimated 1.5 billion passengers during the year before the trial. These teams were the units of randomization; they were randomized into the treatment group (n = 34 teams), which applied the procedural justice checklist, and the control group (n = 31 teams), which conducted business as usual.

The treatment group consisted of 227 individual counterterrorism officers. Most teams were located in airports (24), but some were in seaports (9) or train ports (1). The control group consisted of 224 individual counterterrorism officers who also worked in air (22), sea (7), and train ports (2). The role of these counterterrorism teams was to stop and search persons suspected of involvement in the commission, preparation, or instigation of terroristic acts. During the study, 1,418 persons of interest were stopped by these teams. Of those persons stopped by the treatment group (n = 803), 85.8 percent were male, 52.6 percent were in a relationship, 33.8 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 37.4 percent were foreign nationals. Of the persons stopped by the control group (n = 615), 85.5 percent were male, 53.5 percent were in a relationship, 31.6 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 33.7 percent were foreign nationals. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in any baseline measures.

The outcomes included measures of distributive justice, effectiveness of counterterrorism, obligation to obey the law, willingness to cooperate with police, and social resistance. Distributive justice, or the perception of fairness in treatment in comparison with what others receive, was measured by four Likert-type items such as "The police treated me the same way any other person would have been treated." Effectiveness of counterterrorism was measured using multiple items with a Likert-type scale such as "The police are too soft on terrorism." Obligation to obey the law was measured by three Likert-type items on a scale of 1 to 5, such as "It is alright to go against the law, if you think the law is wrong." Willingness to cooperate with police was measured by 10 Likert-type items on a scale of 1 to 4, such as "I would report a person I overheard discussing their involvement with terrorism." Social resistance, or willingness and ability to defy a country or dominant group, was measured using multiple items with a Likert-type scale such as "I often find myself objecting to the symbols of my country." A series of linear, logistic, and ordered logit multilevel regression models were used to estimate the effect the procedural justice checklist had on these outcomes. The study did not conduct subgroup analyses.

An example of the procedural justice checklist used by the counterterrorism officers and the survey taken by participants can be found here, under "Electronic Supplementary Material."

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: