Measuring people in prison's perceptions of correctional officer procedural justice

The measurement of procedural justice has received some meaningful examination, but research has yet to demonstrate measurement invariance, item invariance, or the measurement properties of people in prison's perceptions of correctional officer procedural justice. Demonstrating measurement invariance provides evidence that items included in a proposed construct are responded to similarly by different groups of people. In this study we provide evidence of measurement invariance of a five-item measure of prison procedural justice across sex, race/ethnicity, age, time in prison, and security level. However, given data limitations, some questions remain regarding the applicability of the proposed measure across sex and security level, specifically females incarcerated in maximum-security facilities. As applications of procedural justice move beyond policing, it is important we understand how to reliably measure procedural justice in other criminal justice contexts and have measures empirically shown to be reliable and valid for future research. This study offers researchers with such a construct in the form of a short, reliable measure of people in prison's perceptions of correctional officer procedural justice.