Trust, legitimacy and punitive policies: a literature narrative review on procedural justice in the relationship between citizens, police and institutions

Abstract

This article provides a literature review of criminological and socio-legal scholarship on procedural justice, institutional trust and legitimacy, with a particular focus on the role of punitive public policies in shaping these dimensions. Building on Tyler’s procedural justice paradigm, the paper maps the current state of theoretical and empirical research on policing, focusing on three main analytical axes: procedural justice theory, the conceptual distinction between trust and confidence, and legitimacy as a normative and relational construct. The aim is to understand how coercive and punitive public policies may influence citizens’ trust in institutions and levels of perceived legitimacy. The review shows that the literature widely acknowledges the central role of trust and legitimacy for the sustainable functioning of the penal system, while also revealing a significant lack of studies explicitly linking punitive policies to these symbolic resources. Findings suggest the existence of a bidirectional relationship: declining trust fuels political demand for punishment, whereas strongly punitive policies tend to erode trust (particularly trust as moral expectation) and normative alignment between citizens and institutions over time. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for multi-level theoretical and empirical approaches capable of integrating micro-level interactions, institutional contexts and policy choices in the analysis of democratic legitimacy and governance of penal systems.