1-020 - Antecedents and Consequences of Legal Socialization among Ethnically-Racially Diverse Adolescents

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Legal socialization, or the process through which youth develop their perceptions of the law and law enforcement (Fagan, 2018), has come to the forefront of national conversation. However, limited research has focused on understanding the multiple, developmental sources of legal socialization and the consequences of legal socialization during adolescence. Adolescents’ ethnicity-race certainly plays a central role in how they learn to relate with and evaluate the law and legal authorities (Fagan & Tyler, 2005). The studies in the present symposium take important steps towards addressing these gaps. The studies use longitudinal data to examine multiple sources of legal socialization (peers versus adults) and to test for multiple relevant consequences (evaluations of police and psychological well-being) among ethnically-racially diverse adolescents.

The first paper will examine whether the ethnicity-race of child-mother dyads moderates the association of mothers’ attitudes toward the police on trajectories of youths’ attitudes toward the police, over and above youths’ contact with law enforcement. The second paper will examine whether ethnicity-race shapes the buffering role of peers for the negative and unintended consequences of policing on adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The third paper will explore whether students’ ethnicity-race, their political affiliation, and the intersections moderate trends in students’ perceptions of law enforcement from 2005 to 2016. Given the media attention on policing in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, these studies examining the roles of ethnicity-race and police during adolescence are novel and timely.

Sub Unit

• Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Chair

• Juan Del Toro, New York University

Discussant

• Vonnie McLoyd, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Individual Presentations

• The role of re-arrests in juvenile offenders’ and their mothers’ attitudes toward police - Presenting Author: Caitlin Cavanagh, Michigan State University; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth Cauffman, University of California, Irvine

• Police-Initiated Contact and Adolescents’ Well-Being: The Roles of Personal and Vicarious Experiences with Police - Presenting Author: Juan Del Toro, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Diane Hughes, New York University

• Race, Politics, and Policing: A Decade of Perceptions of Law Enforcement among America’s Youth - Presenting Author: Adam Fine, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Cortney Simmons, University of California, Irvine; Non-Presenting Author: Zachary Rowan, Simon Fraser University