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Police Contact and the Legal Socialization of Urban Teens Amanda Geller and J Effrey Fagan

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Police Contact and the Legal Socialization of Urban Teens Amanda Geller and J Effrey Fagan Police Contact and Legal Socialization Police Contact and the Legal Socialization of Urban Teens amanda Geller and j effrey faGan Contemporary American policing has routinized involuntary police contacts with young people through fre- quent, sometimes intrusive investigative stops. Personal experience with the police has the potential to cor- rode 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 socializa- tion. 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 among teens reporting experiences characterized by procedural justice. Our findings suggest that aggressive policing risks weakening teens’ deference to law and legal authorities. Keywords: policing, legal socialization, legal cynicism, adolescents Recent high-profile incidents of police violence quent and sometimes intrusive investigative toward citizens have underscored the everyday stops and frisks, often on threadbare suspicion presence of police in the lives of young people. of criminal behavior (Fagan et al. 2010; Fagan Contemporary policing, including “proactive and Geller 2015; White and Fradella 2016). In policing” models, has routinized police con- both large and small cities, these contacts can tacts between citizens and police (Kubrin et al. lead to official sanctions in the form of non- 2010; Tyler, Fagan, and Geller 2014). These re- criminal summons for violations of municipal gimes expose teens to police in their everyday codes or arrests for minor misdemeanors (Fa- routines, translating into regular and involun- gan and Ash 2017). Studies show that the bur- tary police- citizen interactions through fre- den of these police contacts and arrests condi- Amanda Geller is clinical associate professor of sociology at New York University. Jeffrey Fagan is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. © 2019 Russell Sage Foundation. Geller, Amanda, and Jeffrey Fagan. 2019. “Police Contact and the Legal So- cialization of Urban Teens.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5(1): 26–49. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.1.02. The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421, as well as a consortium of private founda- tions. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors are grateful for feedback from participants at the Russell Sage Foundation authors’ conference and from anonymous reviewers. Direct correspondence to: Amanda Geller at [email protected], Department of Sociology, New York University, 295 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012. Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Li- cense. polIce contact and le Gal soc IalIzatIon 27 tional on police encounters fall on young Others show that legal cynicism runs deeper minority males (on burden, U.S. Department among youths and adults in neighborhoods of Justice 2015, 2016, 2017; on arrests, Kochel, that are more heavily policed (Kirk and Mat- Wilson, and Mastrofski 2011). suda 2011; Desmond, Papachristos, and Kirk Police are also regularly present in urban 2016). Particularly if the “dosage” of police con- and suburban schools, and often have the au- tact is strong, citizens who feel they have been thority to make arrests and engage in other en- treated harshly or unfairly by the police, expe- forcement activity, often for minor incidents rienced procedural injustice (Bell 2016), or were that could be handled informally by school of- stopped due to racial discrimination are at risk ficials (Kupchik 2010). As is true of aggressive of diminished perceptions of police legitimacy street policing, the burden of police contact in (Tyler, Fagan, and Geller 2014) and the develop- schools falls predominantly on black and La- ment of legal cynicism (Brunson 2007; Fagan tino youth (on policing, Fagan et al. 2010; and Tyler 2005; Kirk and Matsuda 2011). Be- Weitzer, Tuch, and Skogan 2008; on schools, cause policing is woven into the social fabric Nance 2016; Rocque and Paternoster 2011; on of urban neighborhoods, teens’ legal socializa- youth, White 2015). tion might also be influenced by police activity Personal experience with the police and that they witness in their neighborhoods, even other forms of interpersonal racial discrimina- if they are not personally involved (Stuart 2016). tion are critical factors in the legal socialization Both Dennis Rosenbaum and his colleagues of adolescents (Berg et al. 2016; Brunson 2007; and Brunson and Weitzer identify a “vicarious” Burt, Lei, and Simons 2017; Fagan and Tyler experience of policing, in which perceptions 2005; Fagan and Piquero 2007). By legal social- of the police are influenced not only by one’s ization, we refer to the interaction of natural own experiences, but also by the experiences maturation with a broad set of situational ex- of others (Rosenbaum et al. 2005; Brunson and periences. Interactions with legal authorities Weitzer 2009; compare Fagan and Piquero are a key feature of those experiences, because 2007). Each additional direct or vicarious inter- for most adolescents, police stand alongside action provides new information and experi- school authorities as the face of the state ences that can add to their evaluations of legal (Shedd 2015). Through those interactions, chil- authorities (Fagan, Tyler, and Meares 2016). dren and adolescents develop values and atti- These interactions and socialization experi- tudes about law and the legal actors that en- ences influence crime over time, especially in force it; these legal interactions frame their the distinct contexts of adolescent develop- cognitive schema of the socio- legal landscape ment for African American youths (Burt, Lei, around them (Burt, Lei, and Simons 2017). and Simons 2017). The frequency of police- youth contacts in In this article, we examine the intersection poor neighborhoods skews the locus of adoles- of aggressive policing and legal socialization of cent socialization in those places toward their teenagers and young adults, with a focus on interactions with police. Carla Shedd finds that one dimension of legal socialization: legal cyn- Chicago youths stopped by the police show icism (Sampson and Bartusch 1998; Bell 2016). high rates of distress and perceptions of injus- Following Robert Sampson and Dawn Bar- tice (2015). Rod Brunson and Ronald Weitzer tusch, we define legal cynicism as “anomie identify feelings of “hopelessness” and being about law” (1998, 778). “Anomie” was a state of “dehumanized” (2009). Benjamin Justice and disconnection of individuals from both com- Tracey Meares contend that people gain infor- munity and the social and legal norms of the mation about their position in society from in- state. More recent expressions of legal cynicism teractions with the legal system throughout emphasize the rejection of the law and its adolescence (2014). This forms the basis of their agents as “illegitimate” and “unresponsive” to relationship with legal authorities and their concerns about safety and justice (Kirk and Pa- sense of democratic belonging and obligation pachristos 2011, 1191). These perspectives view to the law (Epp, Maynard- Moody, and Haider- legal cynicism as disrupting willing deference Markel 2014; Bell 2016; Soss and Weaver 2017). to legal actors and as unraveling social cohe- rsf: the russell sage foundation journal of the social sciences 28 crImInal just Ice contact and InequalIty sion and the social bonds that connect people suspicion and aggressive enforcement of minor to each other and the state (on legal actors, Ty- crimes and civil violations. Debra Livingston ler and Huo 2002; Carr, Napalitano, and Keating and Philip Heymann each describe this as the 2007; on bonds, Sampson and Bartusch 1998). “new policing,” featuring the integration of ad- Monica Bell expands the concept of legal cyn- vanced statistical metrics, new forms of orga- icism to include an animating process result- nizational accountability, and aggressive en- ing from experiences of procedural injustice forcement of minor crimes (Livingston 1997; in a situational context of social exclusion and Heymann 2000). Police also apply this model marginalization (2016). Exposure to young to use field interrogations or investigative stops adults to these policing tactics is woven into as prophylactics to scrub from local areas the the developmental landscape of children and social conditions thought to contribute to adolescence, potentially skewing their social- crime (Skogan 1990; Harcourt 1998; Taylor ization to law, legal actors, and underlying so- 2001). The model has been adopted in large and cial norms. small cities, and institutionalized in everyday From this framework, we assess how police- police- citizen interactions, especially among youth
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