“EXPERIENCE OF THE EXPECTED?” RACE AND ETHNICITY DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECTS OF POLICE CONTACT ON YOUTH*

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12174
• Author: STEPHANIE ANN WILEY,LEE ANN SLOCUM
• Date: 01 May 2018
• Published date: 01 May 2018

“EXPERIENCE OF THE EXPECTED?” RACE

AND ETHNICITY DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECTS

OF POLICE CONTACT ON YOUTH∗

LEE ANN SLOCUM1and STEPHANIE ANN WILEY2

1Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri—St.

Louis

2School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University

KEYWORDS: police contact, race/ethnicity, procedural justice

Proponents of police reform have called for changes in the way police interact with

citizens, particularly with people of color. The rationale, in part, is that when peo-

ple have more favorable perceptions of their police encounters, they view the police

as more just and are more willing to cooperate and comply with the law. To assess

whether perceptions of police-initiated encounters shape law-related outcomes, we ex-

amine how satisfaction with treatment during prior police contact affects procedural

injustice, reporting intentions, norms supporting the use of violence, and delinquency.

We also explore whether these relationships vary among Blacks, Whites, and Latinos.

Our results indicate that youth who have been stopped or arrested fare worse than

their counterparts with no police-initiated contact; however, the potentially negative

ramifications of these encounters on all outcomes except violence norms are gener-

ally mitigated when youth are satisfied with their treatment. The effects of contact are

mostly invariant across racial/ethnic groups when a robust set of control variables are

included. We conclude that changing the perceptions of youth regarding how they are

treated by the police may mitigate some of the harms of being stopped or arrested,

but we caution that these perceptions are shaped by factors aside from police behavior

during encounters.

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2018.56.issue-2/issuetoc.

This research was made possible, in part, by the support and participation of seven school districts,

including the School District of Philadelphia. This project was supported by Award No. 2006-JV-

FX-0011 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department

of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article

are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice or of

the seven participating school districts. We would like to thank Finn Esbensen for his comments

and the use of the G.R.E.A.T data as well as our colleagues for their feedback during our faculty

brownbag series. The editor and four anonymous reviewers also provided insightful critiques, as

did Eric Karch and Cherrell Green. Finally, we would like to thank the Institute of Criminal Law

and Criminology at the University of Leiden, who hosted the first author while she worked on this

project.

Direct correspondence to Lee Ann Slocum, Department of Criminology and Criminal Jus-

tice at the University of Missouri—St. Louis, 1 University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121-4400

(e-mail: slocuml@umsl.edu).

C2018 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12174

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 56 Number 2 402–432 2018 402

VARIABILITY IN THE CONSEQUENCES OF POLICE CONTACT 403

Recent protests across the United States have highlighted the contentious relationship

between police and citizens that exists in many urban areas. Although sparked by police

killings of Blacks, these protests have also brought attention to more mundane interac-

tions between the police and citizens, especially young Black men. There is mounting

evidence that police-initiated encounters, which include stops and arrests, often for mi-

nor crimes, have ancillary consequences. Not only do they have the potential to damage

people’s perceptions of the police and their legitimacy, but they also can reduce people’s

willingness to cooperate with law enforcement and may even amplify delinquency and

offending (Augustyn and Ward, 2015; Wiley, Slocum, and Esbensen, 2013). In light of

these potential harms, some have argued that police use of stops and arrests should be

minimized.

At the same time, increases in violence beginning in 2015 in several major cities and the

controversy over de-policing and the “Ferguson Effect” have led some citizens to demand

increased policing of their neighborhoods. They have asserted that the police are a critical

part of a comprehensive crime control strategy and that they should be more proactive

in their neighborhoods and in “clearing the corners.” Thus, law enforcement faces two

challenges: “Curtail crime as the residents want, and change the way policing is practiced

as the Justice Department demands” (Hermann, 2016: para. 13). This demand for more,

but different, policing is not new; it has long been recognized that the people who have

the most to gain from police services are often those who bear the brunt of aggressive

policing strategies (e.g., Carr, Napolitano, and Keating, 2007; Tyler and Huo, 2002).

Solutions posed to address citizens’ concerns primarily have been focused on changing

the manner in which police interact with citizens, particularly when making stops and ar-

rests (Tyler, Jackson, and Mentovich, 2015). These discussions are often couched within

the procedural justice framework, which is a process-based model of regulation. Accord-

ing to this framework, several benefits emerge when police treat citizens fairly and follow

fair procedures. For example, people will feel like they are valued members of society,

they will view the police as more just and legitimate, they will be more willing to coop-

erate with law enforcement, and they will be more likely to obey the law (Tyler, 2006

[1990]; Tyler and Huo, 2002). Importantly, fair treatment not only is expected to mitigate

any harm that might come from adversarial encounters, but it also should promote proso-

cial changes in attitudes and behavior. Some researchers even have asserted that treating

citizens fairly and respectfully is itself a form of crime control (e.g., Hough, Jackson, and

Bradford, 2016).

The process-based model of regulation and the procedural justice framework are in-

herently appealing, but there is some doubt about whether changing the dynamics of

police–citizen interactions can effectively counteract the potentially negative effects of

being treated like a suspect. First, researchers have found asymmetry in the relationship

between the public’s ratings of police-initiated encounters and their perceptions of the po-

lice, with the negative consequences of negative encounters far outweighing the positive

impact of positive encounters (e.g., Skogan, 2006).

Second, studies in which the ramifications of positive and negative encounters with the

police are examined suffer from several important limitations that weaken the strength

of their conclusions. For example, in most studies, scholars have used cross-sectional data

that conflate prior perceptions of law enforcement with encounter-based assessments of

police behavior, likely biasing findings in favor of the procedural justice framework. Other

confounders that influence people’s experiences with the police and outcomes of interest