Police
Overview
Our studies examine what youth think about police, including identifying racial and ethnic disparities and developmental trends, as well as evaluating the effects of police-youth programs communities are choosing to run.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities
Overview
We leverage a variety of studies (primary and secondary data) and designed (cross-sectional, longitudinal, and historical) to examine youths' perceptions of law enforcement. Some of our work finds:
Racial and ethnic disparities in perceptions of law enforcement begin during childhood
Perceptions of police decline during adolescence, fueled in part by increasing perceptions that police are biased
Perceptions of police bias fuel the development of the "code of the street" and youth violence.
Youth differentiate between legal insitutions, like police, and social institutions, like schools
Both racial and political identity matter for affecting white youths' views of law enforcement, but among youth of color, race trumps politics
Youths' perceptions of police recently hit a decades-long, historical low
Team Kids Evaluation
Project Overview
Some communities around the country are choosing to follow President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing's recommendation to implement police-youth programming within non-enforcement contexts. We believe that any such effort needs to be closely evaluated to ensure there are no iatrogenic effects on youth and the community.
The Team Kids program empowers youth to change their community. It trains local first responders (like police and firefighters) in positive youth development and enables them to support the children in a positive, safe, and non-enforcement context. Under the guidance of Team Kids coaches, the first responders help children plan their own food drives, fundraisers, and carnivals to address community issues (like hunger, homelessness, suicide, abandoned animals) that the children find important.
The Youth Justice Lab's Role
The Youth Justice Lab is working closely with Team Kids, school districts, and first responders to independently measure the impact of the program, both on the youth and on the first responders. To date, the YJL has evaluated the program in California (including Compton) and New York. We are evaluating the program in Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona.
Recent Articles
Post-doctoral researcher Kathleen Padilla and Professor Fine published a short op-ed commentary at The Conversation. Read it here.
The Compton Unified School District also recently published a short summary. Read it here.
Interested in bringing it to your community?
The YJL's involvement pertains to evaluating the program's impacts. We do not run the program. If your community would like to learn more about implementing the Team Kids Challenge, please email Julie Hudash (jhudash [at] teamkids.org) of the Team Kids organization that implements the program.
TeamKids Compton
With the partnership with the Compton Unified School District, Compton Police Department, and the Team Kids nonprofit program, we conducted a four-school randomized controlled trial to examine the impact of the program on youths' perceptions of the police as well as on positive youth development. The results are published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-020-09438-7
We are currently surveying the law enforcement officer partners to examine the impacts of the program on them.
Youths' Perceptions of Law Enforcement
The results of this study suggested that youths' perceptions of police differ by age and by race/ethnicity.
White youths' perceptions are largely stable from ages 7-14.
Latinx youths' perceptions appear to improve during middle-to-late childhood, from ages 7 to 9, before declining rapidly thereafter.
Black youth report the worst perceptions of police, and their perceptions appear to decline consistently from ages 7 to 14.
Hear more about this study on PBS: Arizona Horizon.
The results are published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-020-09438-7
TeamKids Phoenix
With the partnership of the Cartwright School District, Phoenix Police Department, and the Team Kids nonprofit program, we will be evaluating the program in Phoenix schools soon. The program evaluation will be funded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).
TeamKids Tempe
With the partnership of the Tempe Elementary School District #3, Tempe Police Department, and the Team Kids nonprofit program, we are currently evaluating the program's impacts in two Tempe schools. That includes surveying all of the youth and law enforcement participants in the program. The program implementation was supported by the Starbucks Foundation.
Publications
Fine, A., Padilla, K., & Tom, K. (2020). Police Legitimacy: Identifying Developmental Trends and Whether Youths’ Perceptions Can be Changed. Journal of Experimental Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-020-09438-7
Fine, A., Padilla, K. , & Tapp, J. (2019). Can Youths’ Perceptions of the Police be Improved? Results of a School-Based Field Evaluation in Three Jurisdictions. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 25(4), 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000207