Legitimacy (criminal law)

“Whatever this law might be,” Kropotkin writes, “it promised to affect lord and peasant alike; it proclaimed the equality of rich and poor before the judge”.

But peculiar to the police function is the statesponsored use of violence and force, the resolution of conflict, and the enforcement of legally-prescribed conduct and rule-following (Banton, 1964; Bittner, 1970; Reiner, 2010).

The legitimacy of the police and the law leads to a respect for legal guidelines for action that dictates appropriate and personally binding behaviour.

[3] These multiple meanings are linked to distinct approaches to conceptualization and measurement, with scholars variably treating legitimacy as a property of an object, a perception of observers, or a characteristic of certain social environments.

Genetic and psychological factors may be an influence; community context and effects might also be important; all these and other notions have been brought to bear on attempts to explain why people commit crime.