The role of re-arrests in juvenile offenders’ and their mothers’ attitudes toward police

• In Event: 1-020 - Antecedents and Consequences of Legal Socialization among Ethnically-Racially Diverse Adolescents

Integrative Statement

Background: Youths’ attitudes toward the justice system are malleable through adolescence with the accrual of personal experiences (Piquero et al., 2005). Additionally, the attitudes and experiences of family are critical in informing the youth’s developing justice system attitudes (Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2015). However, it is unknown whether youths’ personal experience with police outweighs the socializing influence of their parents in shaping youths’ justice system attitudes. Importantly, attitudes toward police are inextricably tied to issues of race/ethnicity among youth (Wu, Lake, & Cao, 2015). The present study compares the relative effects of—and racial/ethnic differences in-- two socializing mechanisms (mothers’ attitudes and youths’ re-arrests) on trajectories of youths’ attitudes toward police over three years.
Methods: Data were drawn from a prospective longitudinal study of 317 mothers-son dyads (N=634) who were interviewed over three years following the youth’s first arrest in CA, PA, and LA. Eligible youth were males aged 13-17 who had committed a low-to-moderate offense for the first time. Eligible women were the youth’s primary female guardian (>90% biological mothers). The racial/ethnic distribution was: 21.5% White, 54.5% Latinx, 20.9% Black, and 3.2% another racial/ethnic identity.
Results: Group-based trajectory modeling identified four trajectories of youth’s attitudes toward police over three years: "Low Stable," "Low Increasing," "High Decreasing," and "High Vacillating" (Figure 1). A series of multinomial logistic regressions found that, overall, mothers with more positive initial attitudes toward the police were more likely to have sons with positive attitude trajectories (Table 1). However, the pattern of results differed by race. For White youth, mothers’ negative attitudes toward police predicted youths’ membership in the “Low Stable” trajectory group relative to all other groups. For Black youth, mothers’ positive attitudes toward the police predicted youths’ membership in the “High Vacillating” trajectory group relative to all other groups. For Latinx youth, mothers’ positive attitudes toward the police predicted youths’ membership in the “Low Increasing” trajectory group relative to all other groups. Surprisingly, across all models, youth rearrests were not significantly associated with trajectory group membership once accounting for mothers’ attitudes.
Conclusion: The results add important nuance to the study of legal socialization. In line with socialization theory (Maccoby & Martin, 1983), mothers with more positive attitudes toward police were more likely to have sons with positive attitude trajectories toward police. However, this mechanism functions differently by race/ethnicity. For White families, mistrust in police is a salient socializer, while for Black families, trust in police is prominent. Latinx youths’ attitudes improved over time when their mothers had positive attitudes toward police. Overall, these racial/ethnic differences suggest that different approaches to trust building may be necessary depending on a family’s cultural context. Strikingly, re-arrests did not affect youths’ police attitudes after accounting for mothers’ attitudes, regardless of race/ethnicity. Parent attitudes (and precipitating treatment by police) may be a point of intervention to improve youth attitudes. Community policing programs designed to improve the relationship between youth and police, but which ignore the family context, may benefit from integrating family to shape the attitudes of the next generation.

Authors

• Caitlin Cavanagh, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Cauffman, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author