Adolescent attitudes toward the police in a western Canadian city

Abstract

Purpose -The primary purpose of this paper is to examine attitudes toward the police in a sample of Canadian adolescents. Design/methodology/approach -Using survey data collected from 262 students attending 14 different high schools in a western Canadian city, the paper analyses adolescents' attitudes toward the local police. Criminal victimisation experience, police harassment or mistreatment experience, engagement in delinquent behaviour, and attitudes toward school among respondents were also explored. Findings -The results demonstrated that respondents were only marginally positive in their evaluations of the police. Multiple ordinary least-squares regression analysis demonstrated that respondents who were older and those who held more positive school attitudes, experienced no police mistreatment or harassment, reported no criminal victimisation, and exhibited lower propensity to engage in unlawful activities were found to rate the overall police performance significantly more favourably.Research limitations/implications -As this study reports data based on a non-random sample of high school students in one Canadian city, caution must be exercised in interpreting the results. Continued research attention should be devoted to high school student populations in other geographical locations. Practical implications -Survey findings underscore the importance of the implementation of programs to foster a positive relationship between the police and young people, the promotion of student engagement with school, and the adoption of intervention strategies to reduce delinquent behaviour among at-risk adolescents. Originality/value -As only very few studies have explored police-youth relations in Canada, this analysis offers insights into adolescents' perceptions of the police and factors contributing to their attitudes.

Race, Social Bonds, and Juvenile Attitudes toward the Police

“…Also, the influence of social bonds on juvenile attitudes is mostly direct and only mediated, to a limited extent, by juveniles' delinquent behavior, prior arrest experience, and recent victimization. These results, together with previous research showing significant associations between delinquent/nonconventional values and behaviors and negative perceptions of the police (Chow, 2011;Geistman & Smith, 2007;Leiber et al, 1998), reinforce a strong link between general values and beliefs and specific perceptions of the police.…”

“…To date, there is no specific testing of the impact of involvement on juvenile attitudes. Engagement in unlawful activities, however, has been examined in a snowball sample of Canadian students and shown to be negatively related to the respondents' overall assessment of the police, measured by a single item (Chow, 2011). Another study illustrated that students who used drugs and students who were involved in greater deviance reported more negative views of police instructors of prevention program (Hammond et al, 2008).…”

Changing youth attitudes toward the police through community policing programming

“…The Perception of Police Scale (Chow, 2011) covers four broad domains of policing: police integrity and demeanor, police treatment of minorities, police performance of duties, and respondent's expectations of police performance.…”

“…Community policing is a dominant philosophy across Canadian police agencies, aimed at promoting collaborative relationships between the police and citizens to enhance community safety and crime prevention (Chow, 2011;O'Connor, only marginally positive attitudes about the police in general. This is consistent with previous findings from the Unites States.…”

The Usual Suspects and Invisible Victims: Exploring Homeless Youths’ Experiences with Policing in Ottawa

“…There is a substantial body of literature exploring youth-police relations, however scant research attention has been devoted to exploring young people's attitudes toward the police in Canada (see Wright and Peglar, 1981;Amorso and Ware, 1983;Chow, 2011). This is surprising given that police play a key role in socialization and identity formation particularly for youth facing poverty, family conflict, bullying, and other challenges (Stewart, Morris, & Weir, 2013) and youth comprise a large portion of the population likely to have contact with the police (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006).…”