Intergenerational Effects of Policing: How Parental Police Stops Influence Adolescent Legal Cynicism

• In Event: Families and Intergenerational Transmission of Perspectives on Police and Justice

Abstract

Individuals from marginalized groups are routinely stopped by the police, especially in large urban areas of the U.S. These persistent and often disparate policing practices have well-documented consequences for individuals’ health, psychological well-being, and police perceptions and have broader implications for families and communities. In this paper, we examine the associations between parents’ police contact (e.g., police stops) and their children’s perceptions of police, specifically legal cynicism. We take advantage of a racially, ethnically, and economically diverse sample from a population-based longitudinal study following approximately 5,000 individuals born in large U.S. cities in 2000. We measure adolescents’ legal cynicism at approximately age 15 (based on a continuous scale, and binary outcome) and both mothers’ and fathers’ reports of police stops when their children were ages 3, 5, and 9 (based on the number of waves reported: never=49%, 1 wave=31%, 2+ waves=20%). We find that adolescents whose parents have been stopped by the police two or more times during the child’s life have higher levels of legal cynicism. This result remains robust in numerous models, even after controlling for youths’ reports of being stopped by the police.

Authors

• Ashley N. Jackson, Rutgers University

• Riley King, Rutgers University

• Lenna Nepomnyaschy, Rutgers University