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7 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 307 (2009-2010)
Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: The Benefits of Self-Regulation

handle is hein.journals/osjcl7 and id is 311 raw text is: Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: The Benefits of Self-Regulation Tom R. Tyler*l In this lecture I argue for the value of a self-regulatory approach to law and criminal justice. I do so by first describing and critiquing the dominant approach to regulation in use today: deterrence. I suggest that in practice this model is costly and minimally effective in securing compliance with the law and motivating the acceptance of decisions made by police officers and judges. I then outline a different, self- regulatory model which focuses on engaging people's values as a basis for motivating voluntary deference to the law. I review empirical research suggesting that this strategy is both viable and more desirable than current sanction-based approaches. My argument is that this approach is particularly important when the goal is voluntary compliance with the law and/or willing cooperation with legal authorities. The traditional objective of the law and of the actions of legal authorities is to gain public compliance with the law. This includes compliance in the context of the particular decisions made by legal authorities such as judges and police officers and compliance with the law in everyday life. In both cases, a key societal objective is to bring people's behavior in line with the law (Tyler 2006d). And, in both cases, public compliance cannot be taken for granted. The problems involved in obtaining compliance with the law in everyday life are illustrated through compliance issues involving a wide variety of behaviors, ranging from traffic laws (Tyler 2006d) to drug laws (MacCoun 1993), illegal immigration (Cornelius and Salehyan 2007), and the payment of taxes (Braithwaite 2003; Kornhauser 2007; McGraw and Scholz 1991; Wenzel 2006). In each case, while most people comply with the law most of the time, legal authorities are confronted with sufficient noncompliance to be challenging to the resources normally devoted to social control. And, in situations such as the illegal downloading of music and the illegal copying of movies, levels of noncompliance are so high as to make effective regulation very difficult (Schultz 2006). Similar problems arise with the decisions of legal authorities. Studies of personal encounters with the police demonstrate that people often resist, and even * Tom Tyler is a University Professor at New York University. He teaches in the Psychology Department and the Law School. He is currently Chair of the Department of Psychology. 1 Reckless/Dinitz Memorial Lecture delivered April 2, 2009 at The Ohio State University.

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