Introduction

Police legitimacy has been the focus of a substantial body of scholarship for the last three decades. This research emphasis is well founded as legitimacy is contemporaneously regarded as an essential ingredient of effective policing (e.g. Murphy & Tyler, 2017). Legitimacy is commonly defined within the literature as the belief that the actions taken by a legal authority are right or morally good, and therefore, there is an obligation to obey (Tyler, 2006a, b), or a perception or shared norms (moral alignment) (Jackson et al., 2012). Practical acknowledgement of its critical value is expressed through global agendas to promote forms of security governance that fairly serve the public (United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 2015). The results of this work have been significant in terms of both theoretical advancement (e.g. Tankebe et al., 2016; Tyler, 2006a) and practical influence on policing practices in the Global North (Murphy & Tyler, 2017). At the same time, developments within the post-conflict state building, security sector reform (SSR) and police reform literature have correspondingly included a shift towards goals of cultivating local legitimacy and ownership of reformed institutions as a means to improve their sustainability (Hills, 2014; Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2016).

Despite these shifts, notable limitations remain within both areas of inquiry. Police legitimacy research and practice have been predominantly grounded in studies conducted within the Global North (e.g. Jackson & Bradford, 2016; Tyler, 2006b). While scholars have examined perceptions of legitimacy across diverse social and cultural groups (Miles-Johnson, 2016; Murphy & Cherney, 2011), much of this work has occurred in the context of Anglo-American policing; thus, its proliferation has been contextually limited. Equally, within the SSR-associated literature, the turn towards legitimacy and local ownership has been difficult to implement in practice and has faced criticism (e.g. Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2016; Wozniak, 2018). Research conducted within non-Western settings, however, has started to recognise the importance of contextual and cultural differences and their implications for police legitimacy and approaches to measuring it by researchers (e.g. Jackson & Bradford, 2019). Police building practices have, nevertheless, largely remained technically focused with limited explicit consideration of the contextual setting (Wozniak, 2018). In short, such practices tend to sidestep the importance of social, political, and cultural distance in relation to policing or the viability of measures to overcome geographical and logistical variation in service delivery and their relationship to perceptions of police legitimacy.

There have been notable forays by police legitimacy researchers into the investigation of non-Western contexts that have important implications for guiding how future research should progress (Akinlabi & Murphy, 2018; Jackson et al., 2014; Tankebe, 2009). This work predominantly builds on the theory of procedural justice. It argues that procedural fairness, which can be defined as neutrality, trustworthiness, voice, and respectful treatment in interactions with police (Goodman-Delahunty, 2010), is the main determinant of individual perceptions of police legitimacy (Tyler, 2006a). Procedural justice is the most commonly deployed theoretical framework but is not the only scholarly conceptualisation of police legitimacy. Others have developed in relation to service delivery and authority (Cawthray, 2020). Discussions of the impact of service delivery have shifted over time. More recent normative conceptualisations assert that police effectiveness or service delivery positively impacts legitimacy judgements when it is responsive to local populations’ service expectations (Cawthray, 2020; Tankebe et al., 2016) through demonstrating preparedness (the capacity to deliver services) and responsiveness (the willingness to respond to societal needs or problems) (Cawthray, 2020; Van Craen & Skogan, 2015). Authority is the most recent theoretical inclusion in scholarly discussions of police legitimacy. Developed through the frames of system justification theory (Harkin, 2015) and the concept of lawfulness (Tankebe et al., 2016), this perspective contends that police can cultivate legitimacy through ideological pressure exerted through their unequal power relationships with individuals, helping to perpetuate cooperation and compliance with the status quo (Harkin, 2015). Together these theories or conceptual perspectives on police legitimacy provide limited scope to explicitly address the impact of social proximity—cultural or political—and geographical contextual elements—expressed as physical distance—on perceptions of police legitimacy.

These spatial dimensions restrict the state’s policing reach. In rural, remote, and island settings, non-state forms of policing, security, and governance often occupy the spaces between the state and the population, providing necessary services (Dinnen & Allen, 2015). Space, therefore, has an important impact on the constitution of policing services, what services different state and non-state actors provide, and their social relationships with local populations. In the rural, remote, and Pacific Island policing literature, legitimacy is mentioned as important in ensuring effective policing across actors, but there is limited discussion of how it can be cultivated (or how it is or could be impacted by spatial relations). In short, while rural, remote, and island policing literature acknowledges the significance of legitimacy in achieving effective policing, it does not speak to or directly engage with police legitimacy theories. With few notable exceptions, police legitimacy theories, when addressing dispersed or diverse social and geographical contexts, do not incorporate lessons regarding the impact of spatial relations (physical and social) from the rural, remote, and island policing literature.

This paper addresses this gap by discussing the influence of space on perceptions of police legitimacy and its intersections with existing models and theoretical frameworks. This is done by exploring how the spatial dimensions of policing—defined in terms of physical and social distance—in two archipelagic island contexts located within the Global South (the Solomon Islands and Tonga) affect how policing occurs and, in turn, impact views of state police institutions. We begin by providing an overview of our methodological approach. Before then reviewing and reframing the rural, remote, and island policing literature drawing out the ways spatiality can be explicitly linked to the conceptual dimensions of police legitimacy theories. This reframe serves the dual purposes of identifying gap within the exiting literature while also allowing us to develop our conceptual framework for spatiality which is then used as the cornerstone of our analysis. The value of this analytical scaffold is then demonstrated using the two island case studies through its application to empirical data. This involves a secondary analysis of qualitative interview data collected in 2014 as part of a broader study of police legitimacy in these settings. Our secondary analysis demonstrates how spatial relations (physical and/or social) impact participants’ views and perceptions of local and international police. The paper concludes by emphasising the significance of spatiality as a dimension that needs to be considered, alongside other key contextual characteristics, as a means of advancing police legitimacy theory and research to fit broader policing environments across a variety of contexts.

Methodology

Research Design

This paper explores understandings of policing legitimacy in island contexts, hypothesising that space and distance are important but so far largely neglected considerations. We test this hypothesis in the hybrid regulatory contexts of Pacific Islands countries (PICs) that have faced challenges to policing legitimacy in recent years. The case studies discussed are the Solomon Islands and Tonga, both of which have experienced different types of civil unrest tied in part to perceived policing shortcomings.

Procedures and Participants

This paper builds on earlier work conducted by Cawthray (2020). This larger project examined the antecedents of police legitimacy in these contexts and built a model by applying three conceptual perspectives—‘procedural justice’, ‘service delivery’, and ‘authority’—constructed from the existing literature framing police legitimacy theory (Cawthray, 2020). We examine our proposition through a secondary analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews with 24 participants (two interviews included two participants) conducted in 2014 with community stakeholders at both case study sites. Five participants were former or current government officials, while the remainder were from non-government bodies. All the individuals interviewed held leadership or managerial positions within their respective organisations. Every participant was informed of their rights to participate in the project voluntarily and anonymously, as well as withdraw at any time. Each reviewed project information packages and signed consent forms prior to being interviewed.

Table 1 provides an overview of demographic details for the participants. However, it should be noted that due to the close-knit character of Pacific Islands communities and therefore the increased risk of identification of interviewees only organisational membership and gender information were collected.

Table 1 Interview participants gender and organisational membership
Full size table

The labelling used to ensure participant anonymity in this paper includes a letter to indicate at which case study site the interview was conducted (SI for Solomon Islands, T for Tonga), followed by a randomly assigned number. An additional identifying number is included for interviews that involved more than one participant representing each separate individual (e.g. T11-1 and T11-2).

Analytical Strategy

Our secondary thematic analysis of the data was scaffolded by the ways that space is linked to legitimacy in policing literature. To build this framework, the review of the literature below explores how considerations of space and distance (whether physical or social), as discussed in rural, remote or island policing literature, can be directly linked to conceptualisations of police legitimacy. This provides the foundation for our secondary analysis, empirically demonstrating how spatial considerations are linked to applied assessments of police legitimacy in our case study settings. Results of our analysis are reported according to two themes that emerged from the interviews through deductive coding developed from the relevant literature: (i) policing service provision and issues of physical distance and (ii) police officers and social proximity (distance and closeness). Lastly, we discuss how space and distance influence police legitimacy by considering the alignment between different conceptual perspectives on police legitimacy and the evidence presented within this paper.

Exploring Space through the Literature

Space or distance are commonly mentioned throughout the rural, remote, and PIC policing literature. The necessity of its inclusion as an environmental variable impacting how policing occurs would seem obvious when considering or being familiar with these settings. Rural contexts in countries such as Australia are often characterised by large distances between urban centres and dispersed regional populations. Similarly, PIC populations may be separated by significant geographic obstacles, such as oceans, mountains, or dense jungles. However, this surface-level assessment that equates space solely to geographic distance belies the complex and multidimensional character of spatiality explored in depth within both bodies of work. There are common and divergent themes across the literature that are worthy of deliberation when conceptualising spatiality to consider its impact on police legitimacy. The following section uses an indicative selection of sources to demonstrate the themes of physical distance and social proximity evident within the literature and to build a case that these elements are fundamentally linked to conceptualisations of police legitimacy.

Physical Distance: A ‘Distant Presence’ with an ‘Uncertain Relevance’

Considerations of distance and space are fundamental concepts in the Global North rural crime and policing literature. This is unsurprising as they are defining concepts in the terrain of analysis. In the Global North, different policing models have been used to overcome the challenges associated with policing in rural and remote locales. In Europe, for example France, Spain, and Italy, the rural policing model involves militaristic police services deployed to specialised barracks where they are physically cut off from and unable to be influenced by the local community (Mawby, 2016, p. 11). In Australia, Canada, and New Zealand accounts commonly discuss the difficulty of responding across long distances to dispersed populations and policing distant or isolated communities as challenges faced by officers who are members of bureaucratically centralised policing organisations. Similar themes are discussed with the context of rural policing in China as police units struggle to operate cross-regionally because of the costs of travel associated with pursuing offenders across different regions (Keke, et al., 2023). In the Australian rural context, the police and health services are the most geographically widespread government agencies (Putt, 2010, p. 36). As Dwyer et al. (2021) highlight, the centralised nature of policing organisations leads to difficulties in local service delivery. Officers deployed to rural or remote areas are often isolated and may be based on their own, with limited access to backup (Ricciardelli, 2018; Ruddell, 2017). Historically, when responding to this type of remoteness, officers provided what Mawby (2016) describes as ‘instant justice’ and had limited accountability to officials in urban administrative centres. Similar themes are evident in the works exploring rural policing in Scotland (see Wooff, 2017), Canada (see Ruddell & Jones, 2020), and Sweden (Rantatalo et al., 2021). Technology has helped but has its limitations. Centralising communications through distant urban call centres that carry out tasking and coordination poses risks when disruptions occur because of internet, network outages, or lack of sufficient coverage. It should not be assumed that technology is necessarily equally distributed across rural and urban areas or that all officers have the requisite skills to utilise available tools (Keke, et al., 2023). Balanced against problems such as accountability or responsiveness that arise because of physical distance to centralised command is the high visibility of individual officers who are well known in rural communities. This higher profile can improve ‘localisation’, making officers more responsive to the rural communities they police (Putt, 2010).

Physical distance poses different types of problems for island settings, where backup and support are not only hampered by physical distance but vehicle availability, including seaworthy vessels, and the vicissitudes of weather. For example, in Global North settings with police that are well-equipped and resourced, policing efficacy can be undermined by distance. Souhami (2022), for example, describes how severe weather in the Shetland Islands can rapidly isolate the local communities and the police stationed within them from their connections with the mainland United Kingdom. Storms, cyclonic winds, thick fog, and open landscapes can restrict movement, disrupt transportation by ferry or plane, disconnect communications, and damage infrastructure (Souhami, 2022). The technological ‘fixes’ of contemporary mobile, radio, and internet communications may be cut off or only intermittently available (Souhami, 2022). Police in this environment “feared being cut off from their colleagues, without support” (Souhami, 2022, p. 9). This demonstrates how confidence in police—even in jurisdictions with developed policing frameworks and established expectations about the role of public police—can be undermined by distance.

Such problems are amplified in PICs and territories with hybridised systems of regulatory authority because local populations commonly regard systems that derive their authority from the state as having a “distant presence with uncertain relevance” (White, 2007, p. 6). In these contexts, institutionalised policing agencies commonly work with limited access to serviceable vehicles for transport on land and seaworthy vessels between islands, technology and network coverage, widely dispersed territories (e.g. islands), and populations. Many countries and territories include unpopulated or sparsely populated islands spread across vast seascapes without police or other governmental and social support services. Dinnen and Haley’s (2012) work on the Solomon Islands exemplifies the challenges present within archipelagic island environments. They describe the difficulties police face in servicing the majority (more than 80%) of the rural and dispersed population in terms of geographic obstacles, distance, and inadequacy or disruption of the transport and communication methods used to mitigate these (Dinnen & Haley, 2012). Further, this occurs within a context where non-state sources of conflict management and social regulation are prevalent and relied upon in the absence of state authorities. People tend to turn to and prefer the ‘kastom’ systems even though such local traditional systems of authority often struggle to respond effectively to some types of crime, including substance abuse, serious crimes, and domestic and family violence. Staines et al.’s (2021) study of policing in the Torres Strait Islands similarly concluded that “The region’s geography demands a unique policing response, particularly since the outer islands remain relatively inaccessible to state police” (p. 17). This contributes to the potential for under-reporting and uneven responses to crime because of reliance on community-based authorities and non-sworn police.

The challenge of meeting the needs of dispersed island populations, who live in small villages distant from urban centres with no proximity to a permanent police presence, is a common thread in much policing in the Pacific literature (Bull & George, 2021; Dinnen & Haley, 2012). Howes et al.’s (2021) study of community policing in Tuvalu, for example, highlights how, at times, there was not an officer on duty on the outer islands and the lack of availability or serviceability of equipment and infrastructure contributed to less favourable perceptions of police. Unreliable communications systems contributed to poor service coordination between Funafuti headquarters and the outer islands, and transportation was scarce, impacting police responsiveness (Howes et al., 2021).

Social Proximity: “Law Enforcer” or “Local Resident”

We have described how physical distance can undermine police responsiveness, reliability, accountability and effectiveness—all elements that contribute to perceptions of police legitimacy. Physical distance, however, is not the only challenge; social closeness and distance also influence perceptions of legitimacy. Scott and Jobes (2007) describe the criticality of police–community relationships within rural policing settings. The practical, community-focused style of policing that occurs in these contexts draws on the informal social networks that exist within rural communities, where officers utilise their socially close relationships with community members to carry out their roles (Jobes, 2002; Scott & Jobes, 2007). Police adopt ‘localistic’ approaches, which require them to consider the community’s needs and expectations while simultaneously balancing these with central organisational directions (Wooff, 2017). Adopting the strict ‘legalistic’ style of policing commonly used in urban settings is problematic for rural officers as they are not socially distant state officials but rather recognised members of the community. Ricciardelli (2018, p. 433) asserts that adopting strategies that are “culturally and contextually informed” and involve “increased reliance on civilian community members” can benefit rural officers by reducing their exposure to operational risk. Similarly, Keke et al. (2023) asserts that police officers can both, reduce manpower costs and extend their effective reach through working with local leaders and community members. This localised approach may benefit even specialist police personnel, such as investigators, as they can better grapple with “local criminogenic conditions” when undertaking their work (Rantatalo et al., 2021, p. 1364). Interpreted through the conceptual lens of legitimacy, rural officers can give voice to local concerns while working to enforce the law and maintain order.

This social closeness, however, can complicate and impact the application of police discretion. The organisation of rural communities, their social and spatial relations, and ideas about insiders and outsiders can influence the way that local police personnel apply their discretionary powers, impacting perceptions of impartiality and how the law is enforced (Mawby, 2016; Ruddell, 2017; Scott & Jobes, 2007). This diverges from urban policing, which involves the exercise of discretion exclusively within organisationally determined structures (Mawby, 2016). The isolation experienced by rural police further exacerbates the impacts of this ‘social clouding’ on decision-making. Their separation from available backup, which may take hours to arrive, means they must adapt how they respond to incidents, relying more heavily on the local community for support (Mawby, 2016) and informal conflict management techniques (Ruddell & Jones, 2020). The outcomes of this localistic policing style, therefore, do not necessarily result in “an idealised form of community policing” because officers may perpetuate local norms about ‘what’ trouble is and ‘who’ troublemakers are (Scott & Jobes, 2007, p. 133). This, in turn, may increase the likelihood that police may be perceived as being ‘more legitimate’ if they align their decision-making processes and behaviours with the values and expectations of local rural and remote communities. However, officers who lack experience or sufficient grounding in local communities may act in an antonymic manner, consciously favouring “a more assertive style of policing” because of their isolation and outsider status (Ruddell & Jones, 2020, p. 422). This can have negative consequences for securing residents’ future cooperation and collaboration. Rural police must strike a balance between local embeddedness cultivated through “developing productive relationships with local service providers as well as leaders and brokers” and “being perceived as professional and impartial” (Putt, 2010, p. 38). There is a clear tension between officers’ responsibility to engage in law enforcement in alignment with central organisational objectives, maintain ‘social distance’ and cultivate ‘social closeness’ through facilitating local voice and accountability of officers’ decision-making.

Achieving this balance is complex. In jurisdictions such as Australia (Mawby, 2016) and Canada (Ruddell & Jones, 2020), officers are frequently recruited from outside the rural and remote communities they police. Thus, they may be perceived as outsiders or transient visitors (Ruddell, 2017; Stewart, 2011), eroding police capacity to understand local contextual conditions. In the Australian context, this can be especially problematic in remote Aboriginal communities or Torres Strait Islander communities. Dwyer et al., (2021, p. 220) describe how in such communities, “the strong police presence and distinct racial differences between police and the community assist in the formation of an exclusive and ‘closed’ police culture”. Police are seen and see themselves as strangers, and this undermines localistic policing styles. Pilkington’s (2009) study of the establishment of 18 new police stations in the remote Northern Territory found that policing service delivery could follow two different paths in these remote communities. First, officers could engage in “appropriate policing”, which for Aboriginal people meant demonstrating both cultural awareness and a broader understanding of how life within communities occurs through adapting practices to fit this context (Pilkington, 2009). Second, police could implement unchanged practices or “underpolicing” that resulted in either unproductive, unanticipated or conflict-producing outcomes (Pilkington, 2009). This, in turn, led to ‘mutual disengagement’ with residents as they sought to resolve their problems without the involvement of the police (Pilkington, 2009). In this study, the common dimensions of ‘appropriate policing’ were engaged, visible, proactive officers who were involved and had socially close relationships with local leaders and the community (Pilkington, 2009). Juxtaposed with this, however, were the common characteristics of underpolicing: police did not respond to calls for assistance and stayed at the station (Pilkington, 2009). Put differently, police were aloof and socially distant from the communities they were policing.

In island contexts, maintaining this social balance within policing is similarly difficult. This challenge is more poignant when these environments exist within settler states, such as Australia (e.g. Staines & Scott, 2020), and post-colonial settings, such as PICs (e.g. Dinnen & Allen, 2015), where Indigenous peoples and the state may have contested relations. Community-based policing models have been used within these communities to navigate the regulatory plurality characterising these contexts. The state police are only one source of security that local populations draw on in these pluralist environments and failing to recognise this can have consequences for perceptions of policing legitimacy. Staines et al. (2021), for example, describe how in Australian Torres Strait Island communities, community–police partnerships and policing by consent are valued and encouraged. They suggest that, in part, the region’s vast geography has prompted the settler state to accept and support the ongoing utilisation of hybrid policing arrangements (Staines et al., 2021). Further, this has fostered largely positive and socially close relationships between policing authorities, local justice providers (see Scott et al., 2021) and the community. However, there are evident downsides that stem from these arrangements, such as under-reporting of specific offences (e.g. property crime and domestic violence), that demonstrate negative impacts resulting from heightened social closeness within policing.

Dinnen and Allen (2015) illustrate the risk of overemphasising social distance through their discussion of the police building and reform program led by the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) (2003–2017) in the wake of civil unrest in the island state. Across several of their works, they are critical of the mission’s focus on ‘institutional capacity building’ and privileging of distant state-based policing organisations to the detriment of wider forms of community engagement (Allen & Dinnen, 2010; Dinnen & Allen, 2013, 2015). The resulting impacts of this strategic orientation have been the relative neglect of community-based policing and justice providers that support and provide services to rural communities across the Solomon Islands, accompanied by reduced confidence in and perceived legitimacy of the Solomon Islands police (Dinnen & Allen, 2015). Counterproductively, the social distance between the police and communities has been reinforced, limiting the reach and legitimacy of state policing institutions because of the disconnect between them and these local informal sources of order (Dinnen & Allen, 2013, 2015). This failure to maintain an appropriate socially proximal balance has thus resulted in reduced effective service delivery capacity and a missed opportunity to cultivate police legitimacy.

Watson et al. (2021) similarly describe the difference between conceptions of trust, confidence and legitimacy in Western communities versus rural and remote island communities. Using Tuvalu as their example, the authors explain that in small island settings, trust and confidence in justice service providers are connected to tradition and cultural practices rather than Western ideas of “civic collaboration” and a democratic process (Watson et al., 2021, pp. 624–625). The effectiveness of policing arrangements is mediated through the social relationships between and cohesion of police with traditional leaders and local communities (Watson et al., 2021). Tuvalu’s local population expect policing to align with their norms, which means sharing authority and acting in partnership with communities (Watson et al., 2021). It is the community that gives their intentional consent to the police to act as agents of the state within a broader values framework centred on taking cooperative action to address issues of crime and communal cohesion within the bounds of traditional authority structures (Watson et al., 2021). This clearly contrasts with the descriptions of confidence and legitimacy offered by Cao (2015, p. 244) in their summary of police public perception literature, as being grounded in normative connections between citizens and legal authorities in a democracy. Furthermore, Cao’s (2015) work makes a strong case that individuals or citizens can distinguish between concepts of trust, satisfaction, and confidence/legitimacy. Like Staines et al. (2021), Watson et al. draw attention to the downside of this type of social closeness, which includes the potential for traditional justice processes to neglect victims’ rights and selectively ‘police’ offences.

This brief review of research on policing in rural, remote, and island territories demonstrates that considerations of distance—both physical and social—significantly impact perceptions of policing legitimacy. Physical distance impacts perceptions of responsiveness, effectiveness, accountability, and impartiality. This is the case both in rural and remote contexts of countries like Australia and is amplified in island settings. Physical distance could impact responsiveness because of the limits of centralised tasking and coordination or the inaccessibility of a job. This is exacerbated on islands where resources are constrained or the weather limits or challenges technology and communications. Our exploration demonstrates that the challenges arising from physical distance might be mitigated through social closeness. Balanced against the problems of accountability to centralised command or responsiveness to dispersed populations is the high visibility of locally deployed officers who are well-known in country settings (Putt, 2010). This local embeddedness can improve officers’ accountability and willingness to respond to local residents (Putt, 2010).

But social closeness is not a panacea. While stronger community–police relationships may offer officers informal social support, too much closeness has pitfalls. Enhanced police visibility in remote or island communities means their actions are conspicuous. For example, the greatest challenge for police deployed on the northern Scottish islands is the sense of being in a ‘goldfish bowl’ (Souhami, 2019, p. 45). Mistakes are ‘quickly noticed’ and ‘not easily forgotten’, undermining trust and expectations of effectiveness (Souhami, 2019, p. 45). Social closeness can influence the impartial application of police discretion, as officers are influenced by local views of what constitutes criminality and who its perpetrators are (Scott & Jobes, 2007). Island settings characterised by hybrid policing involve close relationships between state police and other regulatory authorities. Watson et al. (2021) explain police are expected to reflect the community’s views. Giving the community too much voice in this way can impact how policing is carried out, resulting in the underpolicing of some offences and failures to respect or protect victims’ rights (Staines et al., 2021; Watson et al., 2021). This review strengthens our claim that space and distance are important but so far largely neglected considerations about perceptions of police legitimacy. This hypothesis is tested in relation to the hybrid regulatory contexts of PICs in the empirical analysis below.

The Island Case Studies

We begin our empirical demonstration of the value of spatial considerations in relation to police legitimacy with a brief overview of the geographical, historical, social, and political characteristics of our case study sites. This provides important context for our analysis.

The Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands are located in the Southwest Pacific. Its ethnically diverse population of over half a million people is concentrated on the six largest islands (of over 1000), predominantly in rural or remote areas (Allen & Dinnen, 2010; Dinnen & Allen, 2015). Colonisation by the British in the late 1800s provided the conditions for a hybridised system of governance that established a village constable and local traditional courts system (Allen & Dinnen, 2016). Following independence in 1978, these structures were retained, and politics was dominated by competition between strong regional ethnic identities and desires to centralise government resources in the national capital Honiara (Allen & Dinnen, 2016). In practice, constrained resources meant that the centralised state had a limited impact on the daily lives of people dispersed across its territories, and most relied on traditional forms of authority to resolve disputes (Allen et al., 2014). From 1998 to 2003, tensions broke out between the two largest ethnic groups (Guales and Malaitians). Attempts to end the conflict failed due to ethnic polarisation (Allen & Dinnen, 2010). The Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF), comprising 75% Malaitian personnel, and other elements chose to side with their ethnic militia counterparts, aiding them in capturing the national armoury in 2000 (Allen & Dinnen, 2010). RAMSI was formed in 2003 as a cooperative intervention in response to the ensuing civil unrest. The police-led mission primarily funded by Australia (Putt et al., 2018) was in place for 14 years (2003–2017), and the RAMSI Participating Police Force included contingent members deployed from 13 PICs: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Niue, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia. Key priorities were restoring law and order, the RSIPF’s integrity and capacity, and community confidence in national policing (Putt et al., 2018).

The Kingdom of Tonga

The Kingdom of Tonga stretches across 176 islands in the South Pacific. Two-thirds of its 106,000 ethnically homogenous citizens are concentrated on the island of Tongatapu, where the capital Nuku’alofa is located (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2019). Tonga became a constitutional monarchy in 1875 and a protectorate of Great Britain in 1900 (Wood-Ellam, 1999). British influence on the justice system saw Europeans appointed to key positions leading the police and courts (Wood-Ellam, 1999). This system remained in place after independence in 1970 (Campbell, 2014). The monarchy and aristocracy continued to monopolise political authority, including leading and directly controlling the Tonga Police (TP) through appointments to the roles of Police Commander and Minister of Police (Campbell, 2014). The TP was not a priority for funding and, as a result, standards of training, officer skills, specialist capabilities and services declined in quality (McGovern, 2007). There were allegations of police misconduct, such as familial or kin bias, bribery, brutality and politicisation over this period (Campbell, 2014). This environment ignited a grassroots campaign for democratic constitutional reform in the late 1980s (Lātūkefu, 1993). Tensions in Tonga became openly apparent in 2005 when public servants’ resolution of a strike paved the way for greater pro-democracy political activism (Campbell, 2014). This was followed in 2006 by a riot in Nuku’alofa that resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency and the deployment of the Tongan military (Community Para-Legal Taskforce on Human Rights, 2007). Assistance came from Australia and New Zealand, with police and military personnel deployed for several weeks in late 2006 (Australian Federal Police, 2007; New Zealand Government, 2006). The trilateral Tonga Police Development Programme that ran from 2008 to 2020 was subsequently established, focusing on phased capacity building, logistics and infrastructure assistance for the TP (Tennant & Bernklau, 2016).

Themes of Distance: Island Case Studies

The following empirical analysis explores the physical and social dimensions of spatiality identified within the literature through themes drawn from interviews conducted at the two case sites. It is important to state that this study does not assess the suitability or effectiveness of the external police or state-building interventions deployed to the Solomon Islands and Tonga (e.g. Tennant & Bernklau, 2016). Rather, this section tests our argument that spatiality has an important impact on perceptions of policing and legitimacy, discussing two illustrative themes: participants’ perspectives on policing services and the impact of geographic distance and influences of social proximity on perceptions of police officers.

Policing Services and Geographic Distance

In both the Solomon Islands and Tonga, interviewees commented on the impacts that space had on the delivery of policing services and the influence of this on their perceptions. The two case study sites face similar challenges in providing state policing because of their archipelagic geography. Moreover, given their comparatively small populations and consequent economic bases, both governments have limited resources to facilitate service delivery. Participants at both sites commonly mentioned the impacts of ‘distance’ on state policing in terms of travel between places and the scarcity of logistical resources to mitigate these challenges. Specifically, in the Solomon Islands interviews, participants contrasted the relative abundance of transportation methods available to RAMSI against the scarcity of logistical resources available to the RSIPF and discussed how local non-state forms of security filled this service gap. These discussions did not occur in Tonga, where participants focused on local police responsiveness, availability of police vehicles and fuel. Nevertheless, across both sites, interviewees noted that distance had a substantive impact on the delivery of policing by state-based organisations and their views of such service effectiveness.

The challenges of geographic distance featured in many of the interviews across both case studies. The issues described in the Solomon Islands interviews included the population’s predominantly rural distribution across different islands, the logistical difficulties in accessing these village communities, and the inconsistencies of state-based policing services (S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, and S8). As one interviewee explained, “Solomon Islanders are scattered, and the central government services sometimes are quite difficult to deliver or even access.” They further expressed the view that even when services were delivered, “they are not that reliable” and that there was “a gap in the line of communication between village people and government” (S1). This view was echoed by another participant when they stated that in the past, police “used to travel around the communities … walk from community to community … they walked across the island”, but that this was not something local police did now as “there are some communities in the middle of the island that [are] yet to see a police officer” (S5). The logistical capabilities of the local police were contrasted with those of RAMSI: “if a [RAMSI officer] wants to arrest somebody now from Gizo they fly out from helicopter”, but local police would say, “maybe next week we will wait for the ship, or maybe we will have to … get the funds to get the boat” (S6). Other participants similarly highlighted the transportation advantages that RAMSI delivered, noting that “trucks and choppers were everywhere” (S3) and “they did travel with a lot of vehicles using helicopters” (S4). In contrast, local police were described as having to rely instead on the community, with villagers providing police with “a truck that is a private vehicle, and the boat used is some village’s own boat” (S6). S3, S6, and S8 noted that RAMSI had helped the RSIPF with logistical support but that there were still challenges with fuel, maintenance, and limited manpower. An interviewee explained that non-state forms of governance and security filled the service gaps: “[Chiefs and church workers] are important players who are always close to the people in the villages and are committed to their responsibilities to maintain peace and harmony” (S1). The tyranny of geographic distance evident in the Solomon Islands’ responses appeared to have important impacts on views of the consistency, reliability, and relevance of state-based policing services to the lives of the majority rural population.

Similar problems were identified in Tonga, though participants were more concerned with issues of responsiveness rather than impeded access to the TP. Interviewees expressed mixed views on how responsive they believed the TP were, with some suggesting new strategies and equipment had improved response times (T1, T5-2, T9, T10, and T13), while others claimed that these changes were negligible (T2, T5-1, T11-1, and T11-2). In one interview, the positive impact of the introduction of community policing was highlighted as improving access to the TP: “they are starting now to deploy more community police; I think logistically they are much closer to them … the people know it will be directly sent back to the main office and they will get a response” (T10). Most participants mentioned the provision of new vehicles as an important change; for example, T5-2 explained, “now after they have got more vehicles they can respond quicker”. However, there was some disagreement over whether this had resulted in genuine improvements in police responsiveness, as demonstrated by comments made by T2: “they used to drive around when they had a few vehicles … until some of those vehicles ended up hugging trees and coconut palms”. Disparate views were expressed over the availability of fuel for police vehicles. There were assertions that there had been improvements: “I don’t hear the answer that I was told before; you call the police, and they would say there is no fuel in the tank or … we don’t have transport. The police response, I think, is improving” (T13). In contrast, other respondents stated that “now there are so many new vehicles available from New Zealand and yet the response times are still slow” (T11-1) and “I have heard of cases where police have asked the homeowner ‘Can we have $20 to get back to the police station?’ once they visited” (T5-1). The views expressed by Tongan participants differed in their focus on logistical capacity, resources and impacts of responsiveness as a proxy for distance rather than a specific focus on geographic obstacles.

Police Officers and Social Proximity

In both case study sites, interviewees commonly explored the impacts of social proximity when they described how police officers carried out their duties. The Solomon Islands and Tonga are societies characterised by strong family and cultural bonds. Participants commented on the influence that social closeness had on police interactions with members of the public by reflecting on how personal affiliations with family, kin, or ethnic groups influenced conduct. There were similarities in the views expressed, noting the significance that local or cultural knowledge had on how officers engaged with communities. However, mixed and nuanced beliefs were reported across the Solomon Islands and Tonga interviews regarding whether these influences had positive or negative impacts. In the Solomon Islands, social closeness was viewed positively as a means of facilitating cultural understanding and local participation in decision-making when accompanied by impartiality or a degree of authoritative social distance. Conversely, in Tonga, interviewees regarded social closeness negatively as a factor that hindered fair and impartial policing, inappropriately amplified the voices of kinship connections and diminished the trustworthiness of the police.

The impacts of social proximity were evidenced in the interviews through various statements on how officers responded to requests for assistance or approached issues within communities. In the Solomon Islands, these discussions emphasised the importance of social closeness by contrasting the actions of RAMSI personnel from different national backgrounds with those of local police. S4’s statement illustrates this: “the Pacific islanders … know how to approach the community. With the Australians and New Zealanders, they are more distant, they are more suspicious”. Another interviewee highlighted cultural dimensions of social proximity:

[People] really took to the New Zealand officer like fire; he goes to the community, he talks with people, he engages; he sees them fishing, and he goes fishing, so there is more social cohesion ... then you get an Australian that's just brute and rough. (S2)

Social closeness was evident in a description of how the RSIPF operated before the tensions in rural communities: “our local force, they go in there and talk to the people, they approach the people … have a chat about what they're there for … they can solicit the community’s assistance” (S7). S8 argued that the RSIPF needed to engage in this style of policing at present because of the prior conflict to repair its “reputation through police officers visiting people; it helps people to understand them more and to relate to them” rather than just “going to catch a criminal” (S8). In parallel, the need for social distance in police dealings with the public was highlighted as an important complementary dimension of effective policing. S2 exemplified this: “[local police] create an impartial environment for everybody to come together and talk … they are the authority. So everybody, while they may not respect each other, they respect this”. Similarly, S3 argued that they wanted local police to exercise this authority when they had made a complaint: “they negotiated with him [the offender] to bring the stuff back … [to] sort it out quietly before going to court … I wanted him charged”.

Two incidents demonstrate the tensions present when balancing social closeness and distance across cultures. S4 described a disagreement over how to approach an arrest:

The Fijian soldiers, they went and tried to negotiate for this guy to ... surrender to the police. They were trying to do a Melanesian approach ... the Australian officers accused them of trying to help this guy and asked them why they didn't arrest him.

The Fijian personnel were accused of being biased in this account because they did not demonstrate the level of social distance expected by their Australian counterparts. S3 detailed a similar dispute over how the officers should arrest a young offender: “the Australian officer wanted to kick in the door and arrest him, while the Fijian and Samoan officers they wanted to talk to his father”. The participant went on further to explain that the Pacific Islander officers counselled that the officer should “respect their culture; he already broke the law, but if you go kick in the door and arrest him, if any other crime happens here, they won't want to talk to you” (S3). These views demonstrate the nuance in how social proximity impacted perceptions of police. Participants wanted ‘social closeness’ in the form of cultural familiarity and engaged relationships and, critically, social distance through impartial arbitration or use of authority when required.

In contrast, in Tonga, it was commonly argued that social closeness had negative impacts and that social distance was needed for local officers to police effectively. The conundrum faced by TP was described as follows:

Tonga is such a small place; there are so many relationships ... That person who just broke the law, he was coming to ask me to drop the case because we were in school together, or this person here we’re going to the same church. So, it’s very hard, but with independent people that’s good because we’ll just take things as they should be. (T1).

T10 corroborated this view, stating that before the contemporary police reform efforts, “members of the community, instead of reporting through official channels, they would seek out their relatives in the police department … This was because the system did not get used, the side business was more trustworthy”. Yet, despite these strong social connections, one participant remarked that community policing was “not natural to them [TP]” (T12). Across the interviews, participants commonly contended that local officers needed to act independently of relationships but that this was difficult to do in practice. This view was exemplified by an interviewee who stated, “policing is still linked to the Tongan family and sometimes they might enforce the law but only partially” (T8). They argued that local police needed to be trained to “know how important it is to enforce the law impartially” (T8). T13 echoed this perspective, musing that “it would be interesting if they had a way to train police in a small community on how to maintain a more objective and neutral role”. Across several interviews (T11-2, T12, and TP6), participants commended ‘palangi’ (white expatriate officers) for being independent of family or cultural concerns: “when a white man comes to a position, we expect a better result and better performance because, generally, for them rules are rules and orders are orders. It's just black-and-white” (T11-2). In both case studies, officers’ social proximity to members of the public impacted perceptions of police. Yet, while social distance was commonly viewed as necessary, social closeness was viewed differently across the sites as a positive influence on effective policing in the Solomon Islands and a negative barrier in Tonga.

Discussion

The analysis in this paper linked spatial dimensions of policing—physical and social—evident in rural and island policing literature with conceptualisations of police legitimacy. Until now, spatiality has generally only been an implicit feature of research on police legitimacy, which has not explicitly addressed the impact of space on perceptions of policing. We have demonstrated empirically how this conceptual alignment is important when interpreting perceptions of police in applied contexts of the Solomon Islands and Tonga. The empirical evidence presented here makes it clear that spatiality deserves explicit research attention, partly because it has wider utility as a concept to assist in explaining individuals’ legitimacy judgements in various policing contexts outside the urban settings of the Global North. The analysis indicates that spatiality influences views of policing and, thus, perceptions of police legitimacy, though its impacts are complex and layered.

Our contention is that the relationship between conceptualisations of police legitimacy and spatiality holds across several different theory formulations of police legitimacy. We make this argument by using the expanded definition of police legitimacy articulated by Jackson (et. al., 2012) that includes moral alignment, the perception of shared moral values as the mediating dimension between police actions and individual’s compliance. Watson’s (et al., 2021) work in an island context identifies the expectation that policing needs to align with communal norms to be consented to or perceived as legitimate. Further, Cao (2015, p. 244) states that “legitimacy is expressed through confidence in the police” which is the “moral connection between citizens and legal authorities”. Thus, we assert based on our empirical analysis that the dimensions of spatiality impact moral alignment and confidence in the police through enhancing or reducing the effects of the theoretical antecedents of police legitimacy as outlined in the succeeding paragraphs.

First, procedural fairness has been a dominant feature of police legitimacy discourses since Tyler’s (2006b) work was initially published in 1990, which established procedural justice theory as an explanatory model. The evidence presented here suggests that the social proximity component of spatiality intersects with the “four ingredients” of procedural justice: “trust, respectful treatment, neutrality and voice” (Goodman-Delahunty, 2010). In our case studies, social closeness influenced individuals’ perceptions of whether the police were viewed as allowing locals to voice their views (voice), whether they were treated respectfully in culturally appropriate ways (respectful treatment) and impacted assessments of their trust in officers (trustworthiness) (Goodman-Delahunty, 2010). Similarly, appropriate social distance was described as critical to ensuring impartial decision-making, unbiased use of authority, consistent process (neutrality), and assessment of police trustworthiness (Goodman-Delahunty, 2010).

Second, perceptions of service delivery or police effectiveness have been proposed as an alternate explanation for police legitimacy since the inception of procedural justice theory (Tyler, 2006a). The positioning of service delivery and/or effectiveness as an explanatory element has shifted, with more recent conceptualisations arguably encompassing elements of spatiality. Earlier instrumental positioning argued that judgements of effectiveness are based on considerations of the risk of sanction versus the rewards of cooperating with police (Tyler, 2006a). The later normative perspective, however, proposes that service delivery forms part of the social contract with the public and is couched within the idea that for police to exercise legitimate authority, they should be responsive to citizens’ security needs (Tankebe et al., 2016), or the ‘local realities’ of providing these services (Cawthray, 2020). Cawthray (2020) demonstrates that there are two components of service delivery: preparedness (capacity to deliver services) and responsiveness (willingness to respond to societal needs or problems) (Cawthray, 2020). Both elements intersect with the dimensions of space articulated within this paper. Physical distance impacted participants’ perceptions of police preparedness. The archipelagic context, geographic obstacles (i.e. ocean, jungle, and mountains), dispersed populations, poor infrastructure, and limited transportation resources all influenced individuals’ assessments of the logistical capabilities and service coverage of police in both PICs. This result corroborates Akinlabi and Murphy’s (2018, p. 195) reflection that “what benefit is a police force that treats people fairly but lacks the ability to protect its citizens”. Social proximity impacted interviewees’ perceptions of police responsiveness. An appropriate balance between social closeness and distance again influenced whether police were viewed as being engaged with and willing to do something about local issues versus being distant or disconnected. Thus, spatiality is central to effective service delivery, as police need to have the resources to navigate their geographical context and appropriate social proximity to connect with and respond to local community issues.

Finally, the most recent conceptual addition to police legitimacy discourse is authority (Cawthray, 2020), which has been configured primarily through two theoretical frames: system justification theory (Harkin, 2015) and lawfulness, a constituent part of Tankebe et al.’s (2016) model of police legitimacy. Commonly these approaches hold that police use of power operates within the bounds of social order and its established rules (Harkin, 2015; Tankebe et al., 2016). This enables the cultivation of legitimate authority through the generation of pro-authority beliefs through unequal power relations, the perpetuation of this order, and compliance with it (Harkin, 2015). The evidence presented here indicates that spatiality intersects with this theoretical perspective through the dimensions of physical distance and appropriate social proximity. Physical distance impacted participants’ assessments of the relevance of police authority: if officers were not physically present within a community or a police station was too far away and difficult to access, police authority was perceived as irrelevant or transient. Social proximity, meanwhile, impacted interviewee perceptions, as the balance between closeness and distance influenced their judgements of the strength and rightness of police authority. Appropriate social distance was described as reinforcing officers’ authority while demonstrating closeness was also judged to be necessary so that officers understood community issues and culture and could exercise their coercive powers as locally expected.

There are numerous potential practical implications of this research for policing in rural, remote and island contexts. Chief amongst these is consideration of how this theorisation can help inform police in their efforts to cultivate perceptions of legitimacy within communities in different contextual settings. The findings presented here suggest that police legitimacy can be cultivated through efforts to achieve a balance between social proximity and social distance that is communally and socially expected as well as contextually dependent. Further, the challenges to legitimacy and confidence posed by physical distance can be managed through improving both the accessibility, and thus perceived relevance and responsiveness of police to local needs. It is through addressing these aims that the greatest positive effect on enhancing confidence in the police, moral alignment with them, and thus perceptions of their legitimacy may be achieved. Adopting these objectives has further implications for how police organisations deploy their resources and personnel, train officers for deployment to contextual varied settings, and how individual officers or units manage their relationships with local communities.

It is important to address the limitations of this research. This paper is a first step to developing an understanding of the impacts of spatiality on police legitimacy. As such this work has aimed to construct the concept of spatiality and its dimensions by drawing on reframed literature and secondary analysis of existing interview data. This means that the evidence base used was not primarily collected for this purpose and further that this paper draws on two specific case studies in one type of context islands. However, this work still makes an important theoretical contribution given it develops a conceptual construct that has not previously been examined or drawn out explicitly in existing research. Future studies should build upon this work by engaging in direct purposeful data collection using a variety of methods, and analysis aimed specifically at exploring spatiality alongside other police legitimacy components. This work should occur across a variety of contextual settings islands, rural, urban, and different cultural environments to test the broader utility of spatiality and its layered dimensions.

Conclusion

This paper illustrates the relevance of spatiality to judgements of police legitimacy in our case study contexts through the conceptual linkages between the dimensions of space (geographic distance and social proximity) and theoretical conceptualisations of police legitimacy in terms of procedural justice theory, service delivery, and authority. The findings demonstrate how spatiality and the different dimensions of this concept intersect with each of these three primary theoretical perspectives. As Beetham (2013) contends, the legitimacy of power needs to be understood in the context that it occurs, not in the abstract, and spatiality impacts every policing setting, though its influence on police legitimacy may be contextually nuanced and complex. Further, Tankebe et al. (2016) state that legitimacy’s role in prompting cooperation with police may vary in different societal contexts, so taking account of the spatial variation between settings is an important step to acknowledging and adapting to environmental differences. Thus, this paper is potentially an introduction to the broader theoretical and practical potential of our conceptualisation. Our reframing of the rural and island policing literature and our empirical analysis evidenced the link between spatiality and police legitimacy in these environments. Further research is needed to examine the significance of spatiality concerning perceptions of legitimacy in various urban or, indeed, virtual policing settings.