Justice and Life Satisfaction Among Indian Police Officers: A Preliminary Study

The concept of organizational justice refers to employee perceptions about whether the employing organization treats workers in a fair and just manner. Policing research has shown that officers’ organizational justice views are associated with various salient outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and misconduct). No research has been published on the relationship of justice views and the life satisfaction of police officers. The current preliminary study explored how distributive and procedural justice were related to life satisfaction based on self-reported survey data from 827 police officers from the state of Haryana in India. Factor analysis suggested that two variables represent procedural justice: one focused on the perceived fairness of procedures for evaluation and the other focused on the perceived fairness of the procedures for promotion decisions. Only one factor was needed for distributive justice. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis indicated that all three justice variables had significant positive associations with life satisfaction. The results suggest that enhancing distributive and procedural justice views of officers should increase the level of reported satisfaction with life.