Police legitimacy and digital technologies: Integrating procedural justice theorizing, dialogic legitimacy, and police facial recognition technology adoption

Police legitimacy is conceived as constantly being reconstituted through people’s interactions with police. Previous research on procedural justice and legitimacy has mostly focused on in-person police-community interaction. However, the increasing use of digital technologies by police has meant that more policing is done online and without face-to-face interaction with the public. Using facial recognition technology as an exemplar, this paper argues that adopting technologies using the pillars of procedural justice improves police legitimacy. Moreover, we make the case that the adoption of technologies is an act of dialogic legitimacy where police seek responses/consent from communities to guide further technology adoption.