Objective: White and non-White adolescents report different experiences in the legal system. This disparity impacts their evaluations of, and attitudes toward, legal authorities such that non-White and older adolescents tend to perceive the legal system more negatively. Yet, many researchers assume that the process of legal socialization, which involves internalizing norms and information about the law and the legal system, is universal for all ages and races. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that legal socialization models would change over the course of adolescent development and would differ by race. Method: We used data from two longitudinal studies to examine racial differences in the integrated legal socialization model in early, middle, and late adolescence. Study 1 included 140 young adolescents (59% White, 41% non-White), and Study 2 included 296 midadolescents (82% White, 18% non-White) followed into late adolescence/emerging adulthood. Results: Study 1 identified differences in the integrated legal socialization model for young White and non-White adolescents. Normative status predicted rule-violating behavior for White participants, whereas no predictors or mediators related to rule-violating behavior for non-White participants. In Study 2, legal and moral reasoning during midadolescence became relevant in the model for both groups. Enforcement status predicted rule-violating behavior for non-White youth, whereas normative status continued to predict rule-violating behavior for White youth. In late adolescence/emerging adulthood, differences in the model shifted toward the relation between reasoning and legal attitudes. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that legal socialization is a developmental process occurring and changing throughout adolescence and that this developmental process differs for White and non-White youth.
Public Significance StatementThe findings of this study indicate that legal socialization may not be a "one-size-fits-all" process across youth of different racial backgrounds. It is important that researchers explore the different cognitive processes that occur in adolescence, in addition to youths' differing experiences with the law, to better understand legal socialization for youth of color. Practitioners and policy makers should also take a tailored and more sensitive approach when implementing delinquency-reduction techniques and programs for youth of different racial backgrounds.
Rates of interpersonal violence have largely remained stagnant over the past three decades, despite the magnitude of prevention and response efforts to address this issue. Although interpersonal violence researchers have stressed the importance of partnerships between researchers and campus and community-based practitioners, there is still a disconnect between the work done by researchers and those engaged in direct practice in the field. This special issue brings together researchers and practitioners to explore a variety of challenges and successes in identifying common goals, building relationships, and improving strategies for addressing interpersonal violence using researcher-practitioner models.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions of higher education to transition and work in ways that were new and innovative. Even though most colleges and universities transitioned to a virtual platform, the issues that students face continued, including sexual violence (SV). For many campus prevention and response professionals, reaching students during the pandemic posed unique challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic began when the project team was 18-months into a 4-year grant to administer and evaluate the efficacy of a SV prevention and response app, uSafeUS®, at 15 4-year colleges. In this paper, we describe the transition of engaging students with the app in traditional in-person settings to remote and hybrid learning settings. The project team, in collaboration with the campus partners, devised new ways to use the app to support victims of SV and their allies, along with campus professionals in their efforts to support students. These efforts included changes to collaboration (e.g., virtual platforms) and student engagement strategies. We describe how the lessons learned from this transition are important for continuing to engage campus communities in SV prevention and response, even as campuses slowly transitioned back to hybrid and in-person activities. The knowledge gained from this transition are attributable to an ongoing and open collaboration between campus practitioners and the project team.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.