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The invariance thesis posits that the effects of procedural justice judgments on police legitimacy beliefs are consistent across a variety of contexts, including urban neighborhoods. An alternative argument, one steeped in the relational model of authority, holds that procedural justice effects are weaker in high-crime communities where residents do not identify with the police and where they place more weight on instrumental concerns. This study used survey data from 1,000 adults in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The regression models showed that the association between procedural justice and police legitimacy was stronger in low-risk neighborhoods. In high-risk areas, distributive justice was a stronger correlate of legitimacy. Overall, the findings highlight how neighborhood context can moderate the influence of fairness judgments on supportive beliefs.

Considering research on juvenile delinquency more broadly, few studies have examined the legal socialization process whereby adolescents come to accept legal authority and comply with the law as a result of the interaction with informal and formal socializing agents. Police legitimacy is an important dimension of legal socialization, because the police are the visible face of the legal system and contribute to the internalization of norms and values in society. Therefore, this article aims to analyse police legitimacy perceptions as an element of the legal socialization process in Spain among a subsample of 2041 youths aged from 13 to 18 from the Third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-3). The results using structural equation modelling reveal that adolescents who perceive the police as a legitimate institution commit fewer criminal offences. Additionally, police legitimacy perceptions mediate the association of parental monitoring, school attachment and procedural justice of the police with juvenile delinquency. Other explanations for juvenile delinquency are discussed from a legal socialization perspective.

The current qualitative study explores the experiences of Black mothers who prepare their sons for potential police encounters. Police presence in the Black community has historically elicited feelings of mistrust and fear among Black Americans, and those sentiments resonate today. The discrete incidents of police violence in the United States have been exposed due to an increase in media documentation of the phenomenon. Increased awareness of police violence has also provided insight into the impact that police encounters can have on Black families. A focus group was conducted with six Black mothers with sons ranging in ages from 11 to 33 years. Results highlighted strategies that participants shared with their sons to prepare for a potential police encounter, which included knowing the harsh realities of being Black, regulating their behavior, reframing negative schemas about police, and utilizing family and community supports. Participants believed that sharing strategies and instructions with their sons could enhance safety during a potential police encounter.

Objectives:A body of literature has demonstrated that the perceived legitimacy of legal authorities is an important predictor of criminal offending. Criminal offending is itself age-graded and good explanations of offending should offer some insight for how it changes as individuals age. This article attempts to address this gap by developing and testing seven hypotheses regarding how legitimacy changes over time.Method:Using panel data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a latent growth model (LGM) for legitimacy examines how evaluations of legitimacy change from adolescence to emerging adulthood as well as what factors influence this change.Results:During the period individuals were involved in the study, the LGM revealed that perceptions of legitimacy increase as individuals progress through adolescence before stabilizing in emerging adulthood. Several theoretical factors were related to individuals’ legitimacy evaluations including parental evaluations of legitimacy, family support, emotionality, and self-control. Most importantly, perceptions of procedural justice were found to be related to legitimacy, but this relationship weakened as individuals aged.Conclusions:Evaluations of the legitimacy of legal authorities are, in fact, age-graded. Criminologists should continue to explore the sources of legitimacy evaluations in further developing legitimacy as an important theory of criminal behavior.

Procedural justice theory increasingly guides policing reforms in the United States and abroad. Yet the primary sources of perceived police procedural justice are still unclear. Building on social schema research, we posit civilians’ perceptions of police procedural justice only partly reflect their personal and vicarious experiences with officers. We theorize perceptions of the police are anchored in a broader “relational justice schema,” composed of views about how respectful, fair, and unbiased most people are in their dealings with others. Individuals’ experiences with certain nonlegal actors and neighborhood environments should directly affect their relational justice schema and indirectly affect their evaluation of police. Nevertheless, experiences with police, especially mistreatment by officers, should also affect perceived police procedural justice and may moderate the effects of relational justice schema endorsement. We test our hypotheses in two studies with national samples. The findings strongly support a social schematic model of perceived police procedural justice.

This study examined how detained youths’ ( N = 98) actual experiences with the law, including frequency of contact with the police and knowledge about the Miranda warning and interrogation practices, relate to their perceptions of support, fairness, and trust toward the police. Results show that more police contacts were associated with lower perceived obligation to obey the law and higher cynicism toward the law and also moderated the relationships between age and police legitimacy and race/ethnicity and police legitimacy and procedural justice. Comprehension of the Miranda warning was associated with lower perceived obligation to obey the law and procedural justice, and knowledge about police interrogation practices was associated with lower perceived police legitimacy. These findings suggest the potential of legal socialization as a mechanism for intervention among offending adolescents; programs that promote positive youth–police interactions may help minimize negative attitudes and foster perceptions of trust and fairness toward the police.

Objectives:This study evaluates the malleability of judgments of procedural justice. Drawing upon various literatures, five factors are hypothesized to be related to changes in procedural justice: (1) prior judgments of procedural justice, (2) direct experiences of arrest, (3) vicarious experiences of arrest, (4) individual arrest history, and (5) age.Methods:Using 11 waves of data from the Pathways to Desistance Study ( N = 1,354), multilevel models relate within-person covariates including individual, family, and peer arrests, and age to changes in procedural justice, controlling for stable, individual characteristics.Results:Judgments of procedural justice are anchored in prior perceptions. They are also a function of direct and vicarious experiences of arrests with the effect of individual arrests varying across individual arrest history. Evidence also suggests a developmental component. Age has a direct effect on judgments of procedural justice and conditions the effect of individual arrests on changes in procedural justice.Conclusions:Judgments of procedural justice are not static. Given these results, future research should continue to investigate the varying effects of other interactions with legal authorities on changes in judgments of procedural justice in order to form stronger policies aimed at increasing citizen cooperation.

Power-control theory purports to explain juvenile delinquency in terms of socioeconomic class, gender, and family structure. To date, it has been developed and investigated only with Canadian and American samples. This paper extends the application of this explanation by using data collected from Russian youths. As part of a 1992 study of legal socialization, a questionnaire was administered to 268 Moscow students. Based upon their responses to items that reflect elements of power-control, we examine the thesis that gender differences in risk orientation and delinquency will vary on the basis of family structure, as that is determined by parental roles in the workplace.

I: Legal Socialization Theory.- 1 Studying Legal Socialization.- 2 Comparing Theories of Legal Socialization.- 3 Scope of the Study.- II: Testing Competing Hypotheses.- 4 Changes in Legal Socialization over Time.- 5 Testing Competing Hypotheses.- 6 Effects of the Interaction.- III: Exploring the Interaction.- 7 Legal Reasoning and Behaviors: The Mediating Model.- 8 Offender Status.- 9 A Comparison of Two Rule-Enforcing Experiences.- Conclusion.- Epilogue.- References.- Author List.