The Spillover Effects of Classmates’ Police Intrusion on Adolescents’ School-Based Defiant Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Institutional Trust

• In Event: Collective Approaches Mitigating the Racialized Public Health Concerns of Policing among Adolescents

Abstract

Background: Peers’ negative police encounters may have collateral consequences and shape adolescents’ relationship with authority figures, including those in the school context. Due to the expansion of law enforcement in schools (e.g., school resource officers) and nearby neighborhoods, schools include spaces where adolescents witness or learn about their peers’ intrusive encounters (e.g., stop-and-frisks) with the police. When peers experience intrusive police encounters, adolescents may feel like their freedoms are infringed upon by law enforcement and subsequently view institutions, including schools, with distrust and cynicism. In turn, adolescents will likely engage in more defiant behaviors to re-assert their freedoms and express their cynicism toward institutions. To test these possibilities, we posed two research questions: (1) Did classmates’ police intrusion experiences predict adolescents’ defiant behaviors longitudinally; and (2) did adolescents’ institutional trust mediate the longitudinal link between classmates’ police intrusion and adolescents’ defiant behaviors?

We hypothesized that classmates’ intrusive police encounters might elevate their peers’ defiant behaviors via reductions in institutional trust. First, violent police exposure is a determinant of mistrust of the police, which can transfuse into students within schools (Ang, 2021; Legewie & Fagan, 2019). Second, the social and physical proximity of adolescents to their peers within the classroom heightens the likelihood that adolescents will witness or learn about their classmates’ exposure to intrusive policing. Third, individual experiences with the police can shape other in-group members’ views toward authority figures (Tyler, 2000). Given the shared similarities and daily interactions among peers within a school setting, it is likely that peers’ experiences and attitudes toward the police can influence the behaviors and attitudes of others in the classroom.

Methods: Participants included 2,061 adolescents (Mage=15.15, SDage=1.37; age-range=13–17; 51% female, 49% male) enrolled in 157 math classrooms across nine public schools in a US mid-Atlantic city. The sample was racially diverse (35% African American, 45% White, 20% Other racial minority) yet mostly low-income (70% qualified for free-priced lunch). Data on adolescents’ defiant behaviors were obtained from school records, individual police intrusion came from adolescents’ self-reports of existing police intrusion scales (Del Toro et al., 2019; Geller et al., 2014), classmates’ police intrusion was obtained by mean-aggregating individual reports at the classroom level, and institutional trust was gathered from the School Trust Scale (Yeager et al., 2017). Covariates included youth’s race, sex, free-lunch eligibility, prior wave’s defiant behaviors and institutional trust, and classroom racial and socioeconomic diversity.

Results: Intrusive police experiences in the fall term predicted higher levels in adolescents’ defiant behaviors at the end of the school year, regardless of their own history of direct police intrusive encounters. Adolescents’ institutional trust partially mediated the longitudinal association between classmates’ intrusive police encounters and adolescents’ defiance.

Discussion: Whereas past studies largely focus on individual experiences of police encounters, the present study uses a developmental lens to understand how the effects of law enforcement intrusion on adolescent development may operate through peer interactions. Implications for policy and practice as they relate to the larger criminal justice system are discussed.

Authors

• Juan Del Toro, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Presenting Author

• Dylan Jackson

• Alexander Testa

• Ming-Te Wang, University of Pittsburgh