NCJ Number
174310
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 15 Issue: 1 Dated: March 1998 Pages: 151-174
Date Published
1998
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This article examines juveniles' attitudes toward the police and attempts to identify the causes.
Abstract
Past studies of juveniles' attitudes toward the police suggested a single-cause model that implicates personal interactions with the police. This article suggests that attitudes toward authority and agents of social control develop in a larger, sociocultural context. Juveniles' attitudes develop as a function of socialization in their communities' social environment, of their deviant subcultural preferences, and of the prior effect of these sociocultural factors on juveniles' contacts with the police. Social background variables, particularly minority status, and subcultural preferences, particularly commitment to delinquent norms, affect juveniles' attitudes toward the police both directly and indirectly (through police-juvenile interactions). Given that sociocultural contexts affect the development of juvenilesþ attitudes toward police, specific and localized programs alone cannot resolve the root problems of poverty and racial tension that cause disenchantment among juveniles from depressed communities. Notes, tables, references, appendix