Collective Approaches Mitigating the Racialized Public Health Concerns of Policing among Adolescents

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Adolescents’ experienced intrusion from law enforcement is a public health issue (Del Toro, 2021). A large proportion of adolescents in the US have experienced some form of police contact, and such contact is more likely to be intrusive (e.g., stop-and-frisks, slurs, and threats/use of force; Hagan, 2005; Geller, 2021) among racially minoritized youth. The symposium’s three studies present mechanisms elucidating how police intrusion affects youth’s adjustment and strategies to mitigate such negative consequences. Specifically, Paper 1 illustrates that adolescents’ direct police intrusive encounters have spillover consequences onto the adjustment of their larger peer group regardless of their peer groups’ race and histories with police intrusion. Paper 2 investigates the role of interpersonal factors in reducing the harmful effects of direct and vicarious police intrusion among Black communities. Paper 3 takes a novel approach to suggest that the issue of policing entails preparing White youth to become allies in society’s fight to reduce police intrusion among minoritized communities. Altogether, these studies illustrate the collective efforts needed to address the present public health crisis.

Sub Unit

• Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Chair

• Juan Del Toro, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Discussant

• Tom Tyler, Yale University

Individual Presentations

• The Spillover Effects of Classmates’ Police Intrusion on Adolescents’ School-Based Defiant Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Institutional Trust - Presenting Author: Juan Del Toro, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities; Dylan Jackson; Alexander Testa; Ming-Te Wang, University of Pittsburgh

• Understanding the Traumatic Consequences of Adverse Police Interactions among Black Adolescents - Presenting Author: Michelle P Brown, University of South Carolina; Donte Bernard, University of Missouri - Columbia; Curtisha Shacklewood, University of South Carolina; Ashley Bucher, Pennsylvania State University; Stacie Kerbel; Kariann Sweeney

• White Parent-child Conversations about Racial Disparities in Police Brutality - Presenting Author: John Nicky Sullivan, Stanford University; Steven Othello Roberts, Stanford University