A Developmental Approach to Understanding Gender Differences Among Youth Offenders Regarding Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10575677231154861
• Author: Selye Lee,Hyunin Baek,Jonathon Cooper
• Date: 01 March 2024

A Developmental Approach

to Understanding Gender

Differences Among Youth

Offenders Regarding

Perceptions of Police

Legitimacy

Selye Lee

1

, Hyunin Baek

2

,

and Jonathon Cooper

3

Abstract

While there is a rich body of literature regarding attitudes toward the police,longitudinal empirical

research on perceptions of police legitimacy among youth offenders is scant. Using data from

Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of 1,354 serious juvenile offenders, the current

study builds upon the literature by identifying developmental trajectories of perceptions of police

legitimacy among serious young offenders by gender. The study used group-based trajectory mod-

eling, which yielded f‌ive trajectory groups for males and four trajectory groups for females. Female

youth offenders exhibited slight increases in perceptions of police legitimacy, whereas males showed

variations in perceptions of police legitimacy across the seven waves. To examine the probability

that predictors belong to certain trajectory groups, the average marginal effects from a multinomial

logit regression model were calculated. The f‌indings showed that direct and indirect procedural jus-

tice and Black were statistically signif‌icant predictors of the probability of police legitimacy trajec-

tories for both males and females. Compared with the male youth offenders, among their female

counterparts, legal cynicism, self-reported offense, Hispanic, and age were not associated with

the probability of each trajectory group. Given our f‌indings and the strong association between

the likelihood of offending and perceptions of the police, we suggest that existing early intervention

programs may add a curriculum on prosocial attitudes toward the police. The f‌indings also shed light

on the signif‌icance of gender in the developmental perspective of police legitimacy perceptions

among youth offenders.

1

Department of Criminology, Sociology, and Geography, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AR, USA

2

Department of Criminal Justice, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA

3

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Selye Lee, Department of Criminology, Sociology, andGeography, Arkansas State University, HSS 3131, P.O. Box 2410,

Jonesboro, AR 72467, USA.

Email: selee@astate.edu

Original Article

International Criminal Justice Review

2024, Vol. 34(1) 20-42

© 2023 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10575677231154861

journals.sagepub.com/home/icj

Keywords

police legitimacy, youth offenders, group-based modeling, marginal effects, gender differences

Introduction

The 1960s, early 1990s, and the second decade of the 21st century are low watermarks for police

legitimacy. Tensions between law enforcement off‌icers and civilians continue to occur, prompting

efforts to better understand public views and attitudes about the police (Albrecht & Green, 1977).

Recent events such as the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Eric

Garner at the hands of law enforcement have harmed police legitimacy around the country.

Understanding the underlying etiology of public attitudes toward the police—especially of youth,

a vulnerable population that is frequently in contact with the police—is therefore vital for any depart-

ment seeking to restore its legitimacy in the eyes of the body politic. A crucial f‌irst step in restoring

police legitimacy is to strengthen procedurally fair policing practices by understanding the public’s

perception of law enforcement off‌icers.

Previous studies have fruitfully identif‌ied various factors as predictors of attitudes toward the

police and their services. However, the empirical research on perceptions of police legitimacy is

largely limited to studies of adult populations in the United States, even though the age of respon-

dents tends to be inversely associated with public views regarding police legitimacy, with

younger populations exhibiting less favorable attitudes than those shown by their older counterparts

(Hinds, 2009; Hurst & Frank, 2000). Examining adolescent views of police legitimacy has become

even more critical as young people grow up in an era of mistrust of law enforcement (Fine et al.,

2020; Trinkner & Tyler, 2016).

Despite this reality, very little is known about how juveniles regard the police from a developmental

perspective (Esbensen et al., 2001; Fine et al., 2020; Mclean et al., 2019; Piquero et al., 2005; Stewart

et al., 2014). Most works devoted to this issue also have not exclusively focused on perceptionsof police

legitimacy. In addition, while some research has examined gender differences in impressions regarding

the police, their results in both juvenile and adult populations are inconclusive and often contradictory.

To illustrate, while some research has suggested that adolescent males hold more critical views of the

police than females (Winfree & Griff‌iths, 1977), more recent research on youth populations implied

the reverse (Hurst & Frank, 2000). Lastly, understanding views on police legitimacy among serious

juvenile offenders is perhaps more important than doing so among the general youth population

because the former have more frequent encounters with the criminal justice system, especially with

the police (Leiber et al., 1998), which may inf‌luence their opinions and perceptions of law enforcement.

To this end, we employed a developmental perspective in identifying attitudes toward the police

among seriousadolescent offenders. More specif‌ically, we identif‌ied several developmentaltrajectories

that help explainyouth offenders’views on police legitimacy. The current study used the seven waves

of Pathways to Desistance data over a period of 36 months. In addition, we examined differences in

attitudes about police legitimacy trajectories and determined the factors that might be associated

with each trajectory on the basis of gender. What follows is a brief overview of the existing literature

on juvenile perceptions of police legitimacy and developmental perspectives on impressions regarding

police legitimacyamong adolescent offenders, a discussionof our methodology, and a detailed review

of our results and their implication for the corpus of research on police legitimacy.

Literature Reviews

Youth Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

People’s willingness to cooperate with the police as law abiders, problem solvers, and crime

reporters seems to depend on the public’s favorable perceptions and attitudes toward policing

Lee et al.21