Premium
Going beyond Ascribed Identities: The Importance of Procedural Justice in Airport Security Screening in I srael
Author(s) -
Hasisi Badi,
Weisburd David
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2011.00459.x
Subject(s) - legitimacy , airport security , procedural justice , ethnic group , terrorism , perception , identity (music) , economic justice , political science , social psychology , public relations , sociology , law , psychology , computer security , politics , computer science , physics , neuroscience , acoustics
Today, passengers at every major W estern airport are subjected to heightened levels of security screening that not only are inconvenient, but also raise important questions about the treatment of members of specific groups that are seen as presenting special security risks. Our study examines the importance of ethnic identity in explaining perceptions of legitimacy in airport screening among a random sample of J ewish and A rab passengers in I srael. The main hypothesis of our study is that ethnicity will play a major role in predicting passengers’ attitudes toward the airport security process. In fact, our survey shows that I sraeli A rab passengers are, on average, significantly more negative regarding the legitimacy of security checks than I sraeli J ewish passengers are. However, using a multivariate model, we find that ethnicity ( A rab versus J ew) disappears as a significant predictor of legitimacy when we included factors of procedural justice and controlled for specific characteristics of the security process. The results of our research indicate that differences in legitimacy perceptions are by and large the result of the processes used in airport screening and not a direct result of ethnic identity. I n concluding, we argue that profiling strategies aimed at preventing terrorism, which often include embarrassing public procedures, may actually jeopardize passengers’ trust in airport security. Such security is dependent on the cooperation of citizens, and heightened security procedures focused on particular groups may compromise legitimacy evaluations and thus the cooperation of the public.