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Law Enforcement and Corrections

Legal socialization

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Police Contact And The Legal Socialization Of Urban Teens, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller Jan 2019

Police Contact And The Legal Socialization Of Urban Teens, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller

Faculty Scholarship

Contemporary American policing has routinized involuntary police contacts with young people through frequent, sometimes intrusive investigative stops. Personal experience with the police has the potential to corrode adolescents’ relationships with law and skew law-related behaviors. We use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to estimate how adolescents’ experiences with the police shape their legal socialization. We find that both personal and vicarious police contact are associated with increased legal cynicism. Associations are present across racial groups and are not explained by teens’ behaviors, school settings, or family backgrounds. Legal cynicism is amplified in teens reporting intrusive contact but diminished …


Police Contact And Mental Health, Amanda Geller, Jeffrey Fagan, Tom R. Tyler Jan 2017

Police Contact And Mental Health, Amanda Geller, Jeffrey Fagan, Tom R. Tyler

Faculty Scholarship

Although an effective police presence is widely regarded as critical to public safety, less is known about the effects of police practices on mental health and community wellbeing. Adolescents and young adults in specific neighborhoods of urban areas are likely to experience assertive contemporary police practices. This study goes beyond research on policing effects on legal socialization to assess the effects of police contact on the mental health of those stopped by the police. We collected and analyzed data in a two wave survey of young men in New York City (N=717) clustered in the neighborhoods with the highest rates …


Good Cop -- Bad Cop: Police Violence And The Child’S Mind, Andrea L. Dennis Jan 2015

Good Cop -- Bad Cop: Police Violence And The Child’S Mind, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Police violence against citizens lately has gripped the nation’s attention because of recent cases in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; and elsewhere. Children in those communities and nationwide have been directly and indirectly exposed to these well-publicized incidences of police killings and the aftermath of those killings.

Exposure to police violence may cause children physical, cognitive, emotional, and social trauma. Moreover, the exposure may negatively influence children’s mindsets regarding the criminal justice system and police.

Undoubtedly, these events of late are not the first and only instances in which children have been exposed to physically …