From Uncertain to Cynical: Relational Comparison of Experiences of Violence and Legal Cynicism Among Adolescents

• In Event: 30662 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Violence, Pathways to Crime, Life Course

Abstract

Legal cynicism is central to accounts of the occurrence and persistence of violence. How violence, in turn, shapes legal attitudes has been discussed only marginally. This study unpacks the effect of early exposure to violence on legal cynicism among recent American adolescents, focusing on the relational comparison of three sources of violence: caregivers, peers, and neighbors. I first analyze the effects of exposure to violence in the three relational settings at the age of nine on legal cynicism at the age of fifteen. For a robust examination of the relational contexts where legal cynicism is instigated, I simultaneously analyze the effects of exposure to violence on police distrust. While legal cynicism reflects an overarching cultural schema toward the legal institution system, police distrust captures a more tangible understanding of specified law enforcers. By comparing two analyses, I attempt to clarify the relational contexts of violence where the effects on two outcomes diverge. Two main results are found. First, police distrust is explained by experiences of violence from all three relational sources, showing greater sensitivity to violence. Second, olegal cynicism is not explained by the caregiver’s violence. These findings indicate that for a skeptical cultural schema to develop beyond the immediate and tangible distrust, violence should be accompanied by interactional uncertainty arising from complex relational settings. In light of these findings, I then examine whether violence experienced in a relatively well-defined and well-structured relationship—child-caregiver relationship—will produce legal cynicism if the relational uncertainty is provided by a different dimension: the violence itself. I measured the atypicality of caregiver violence at age nine based on a state-of-the-art gradient-boosting prediction model and an extensive set of background variables collected at the child’s age of five. Results shows that high levels of caregiver violence experienced with high atypicality can increase legal cynicism.

Author

• Haesol Kim, Korea University