Understanding youth perceptions of police legitimacy across urban, semiurban, and rural contexts: a legal socialization study

• In Event: POLWG Panel 11. Police and Young People: Relationships and perceptions of legitimacy

Abstract

Legal socialization research examines how individuals develop their orientations toward the law and legal institutions. Many studies suggest that positive views of the law and legal authorities are closely linked to procedurally just interactions with both legal and non-legal actors, such as parents, teachers, and police. While this field of research has expanded in scope, studies that explore variations in legal socialization between urban and rural areas remain limited.
This study addresses this research gap by exploring differences in perceptions of police legitimacy among urban, semiurban, and rural youth in Portugal. Using a legal socialization framework and survey data, the study analyzes a sample of 341 secondary school students from two northern regions of Portugal. Among them, 131 students attended school in an urban setting, 113 in a rural area, and 97 in a semiurban environment. Multiple regression models were estimated to identify key predictors of police legitimacy in each geographical context.
Preliminary findings show that, among urban youth, police legitimacy is negatively predicted by immigrant status and positively predicted by perceptions of procedural justice in both teachers and police. In turn, rural youth’s perceived police legitimacy is more strongly linked to judgments of police procedural justice. Meanwhile, semiurban youth’s police legitimacy perceptions are positively predicted by their sense of belonging to the social group. These and other key results will be presented and discussed in light of the literature.

Authors

• Patrícia Damas, School of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Porto

• Samuel Moreira, CIJ (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Justice) - School of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Porto, Portugal | CEJEIA (Center for Legal, Economic, International and Environmental Studies) - Lusíada University, Portugal

• Carla Sofia Cardoso, Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Crime Justice and Security (CJS) - School of Criminology, Faculty of Law of the University of Porto