Patterns of Victimization, Police Contact and Perceptions of Police Legitimacy in a Third Party Policing (TPP) Intervention

• In Event: Collaborative Approaches to Problem-Solving and Crime Prevention

Abstract

The ABILITY Truancy Trial is a longitudinally designed randomized controlled trial that explores the capacity of police to reduce truancy in a Third Party Policing (TPP) intervention and shape long term change for at-risk youth (10-16 years old) and their families living in disadvantaged communities within Queensland, Australia. In ABILITY, 102 families were randomly assigned to either a control condition (n=51) or the ABILITY intervention (n=51), where police partnered with the Department of Education, Training and Employment (DETE) as a third party, and used school-based legal levers and Family Group Conferences to reduce truancy and risk factors associated with truancy. In this paper, we examine the perceptions of police and school legitimacy amongst ABILITY participants who had contact with police as victims and/or offenders at recruitment and explore how these perceptions changed as a result of participation in the TPP intervention.

Authors

• Sarah Beth Bennett, University of Queensland

• Emma Antrobus, University of Queensland

• Lorraine Mazerolle, University of Queensland

• Elizabeth Eggins, University of Queensland