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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue

Time: 1:23 am

Results for police-youth interactions

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Author: Development Services Group

Title: Interactions Between Youth and Law Enforcement: Literature Review

Summary: Police-youth contact consists of any face-to-face interaction between a youth and one or more law enforcement officers, including sworn officers serving in municipal police departments; sheriff's departments; state police; and special jurisdiction agencies such as transit, park, and university police (Hyland, Langton, and Davis 2015). Contact can be youth-initiated or police-initiated and may occur in programmatic settings, such as police-led programs (e.g., police athletic leagues), or through day-today interactions in community and school settings (Hurst 2007; Goodrich, Anderson, and LaMotte 2014). Some interactions also occur when youths are victims of crime. As gatekeepers to the justice system, police-youth contact can result in informal solutions such as programs and services that divert youth away from system involvement, or arrest and further entry into the criminal and juvenile justice systems (Worden and Myers 2000; Brown, Novak, and Frank 2009; Goodrich, Anderson, and LaMotte 2014). Such decisions during contact with youth can shape the options available to other juvenile justice decision makers in the system (Liederbach 2007). Police-youth contact occurs often and is most frequent for youths between the ages of 18 and 24 (Eith and Durose 2011). Despite the importance and prevalence of such interactions, limited research has been dedicated to understanding the dynamics of encounters between police and youth (Brown and Benedict 2002; Thurau 2009). Though official police data provides useful context for understanding the prevalence of police-youth contact, the data does not provide information on police-youth interactions in terms of the nature of the incidents or how youth behaviors affect the actions of police officers, and vice versa (Skogan and Frydl 2004; Mastrofski, Snipes, and Supina 1996). Most research focuses on factors that influence the decisions made after juveniles have been arrested (Allen 2005) or youth attitudes toward police (Brick, Taylor, and Esbensen 2009; Flexon et al. 2016; Hagan, Shedd, and Payne 2005; Hardin 2004; Brunson and Weitzer 2009; Wu, Lake, and Cao 2015). While most researchers agree that age and race are factors that consistently influence youth attitudes toward police, there is also no consensus on other factors (e.g., gender, social class) that influence youth attitudes toward the police or when such factors begin to influence police-youth interactions (Brown and Benedict 2002). There has also been little research on how youth behaviors and decision-making influence police-youth contact (Brunson and Weitzer 2011), or on how officers' concerns for community safety and their own safety influence these interactions. This literature review will discuss the research relevant to interactions between police and youth. Topics in this review include the prevalence of police-youth interactions, factors that influence such interactions, the role of law enforcement in the juvenile justice system, and the outcome evidence of programs developed to help improve police-youth encounters.

Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2018. 39p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 9, 2018 at: https://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/litreviews/Interactions-Youth-Law-Enforcement.pdf

Year: 2018

Country: United States

URL: https://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/litreviews/Interactions-Youth-Law-Enforcement.pdf

Shelf Number: 149414

Keywords:
Evidence-Based Programs
Police-Citizen Interactions
Police-Community Relations
Police-Youth Interactions