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A Call To Dismantle Systemic Racism In Criminal Legal Systems, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson
A Call To Dismantle Systemic Racism In Criminal Legal Systems, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
Objectives: In October 2021, APA passed a resolution addressing ways psychologists could work to dismantle systemic racism in criminal legal systems. The present report, developed to inform APA’s policy resolution, details the scope of the problem and offers recommendations for policy and psychologists to address the issue by advancing related science and practice. Specifically, it acknowledges the roots of modern-day racial and ethnic disparities in rates of criminalization and punishment for people of color as compared to White people. Next, the report reviews existing theory and research that helps explain the underlying psychological mechanisms driving racial and ethnic disparities …
Caregivers’ Expectations, Reflected Appraisals, And Arrests Among Adolescents Who Experienced Parental Incarceration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Melissa Noel
Caregivers’ Expectations, Reflected Appraisals, And Arrests Among Adolescents Who Experienced Parental Incarceration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Melissa Noel
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
This research sought to identify a potential process by which intergenerational crime occurs, focusing on the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ subsequent arrests. We drew from Matsueda’s work on reflected appraisals as an explanatory mechanism for this effect. Thus, the present research examined whether caregivers’ and adolescents’ expectations for adolescents’ future incarceration sequentially mediated the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ actual arrest outcomes. Propensity score matching was used to examine this effect in a sample of 1,735 15- to 16-year-olds using NLSY97 data. Parental incarceration was positively related to caregivers’ expectations of adolescents’ future arrest. Moreover, caregivers’ expectations …
Beliefs About Police Error Leading To Wrongful Convictions And Attitudes On Police Legitimacy, Julia Melfi
Beliefs About Police Error Leading To Wrongful Convictions And Attitudes On Police Legitimacy, Julia Melfi
Criminal Justice
This study investigates the relations between citizens’ perceptions of how police misconduct as a factor contributing to wrongful convictions is connected to attitudes towards police legitimacy. I hypothesized that there would be a negative correlation between the two variables such that the more individuals believe police error contributes to wrongful convictions, the less legitimate they perceive the police to be. I also examined how citizens’ race affects these perceptions and attitudes, too, and hypothesized that Black citizens are more likely than White citizens to believe police error leads to wrongful conviction and mistrust the police. To test the hypotheses data …
Stereotype Threat And Racial Differences In Citizens’ Experiences Of Police Encounters, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Bette L. Bottoms, Phillip Atiba Goff
Stereotype Threat And Racial Differences In Citizens’ Experiences Of Police Encounters, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Bette L. Bottoms, Phillip Atiba Goff
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
We conducted 2 studies to investigate how cultural stereotypes that depict Blacks as criminals affect the way Blacks experience encounters with police officers, expecting that such encounters induce Blacks to feel stereotype threat (i.e., concern about being judged and treated unfairly by police because of the stereotype). In Study 1, we asked Black and White participants to report how they feel when interacting with police officers in general. As predicted, Blacks, but not Whites, reported concern that police officers stereotype them as criminals simply because of their race. In addition, this effect was found for Black men but not Black …