Police Stops Among At-Risk Youth: Repercussions for Mental Health

Youth Perceptions of Law Enforcement and Worry About Crime from 1976 to 2016

“…Jackson & Gau, 2016; Moule, Burruss, et al, 2019; Peyton et al, 2019; Walters, 2018; Walters & Bolger, 2018). In particular, researchers are also increasingly focusing on youth because perceptions developed during childhood and adolescence may set the tone for how youth view and interact with law enforcement into adulthood (Augustyn, 2016; Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2019; Granot & Tyler, 2019; D. B. Jackson et al, 2019; McLean et al, 2019; Nivette et al, 2020; Tyler & Trinkner, 2018).…”

Low Self-control and Legal Cynicism among At-Risk Youth: An Investigation into Direct and Vicarious Police Contact

“…Psychological research indicates that persons with low self-control are prone to emotional dysregulation and may therefore experience difficulties in controlling impulses and reactions during stressful situations such as intrusive police contact (Calkins 1994; Caspi et al 1994; Gross 1999; Posner and Rothbart 2000). A separate line of social science research suggests that intrusive police contact will carry salient psychological consequences, which in turn may have implications for legal cynicism (Del Toro et al 2019; Geller et al 2014; Jackson et al 2019; Sundaresh et al 2020). For instance, Geller and Fagan (2019:30) suggest that “when interactions with police are harsh or intrusive, the psychological fallout—stress, stigma, anger—can skew the meaning of legal actors and the laws they stand for.” Indeed, past research finds key features of the police stop (e.g., officer intrusiveness, low procedural justice) are associated with greater legal cynicism (Geller and Fagan 2019; Hofer, Womak, and Wilson 2020), and persons with low self-control are at risk of experiencing negative police encounters that worsen social stigma and psychological distress (Jackson et al 2020).…”

“…Furthermore, prior research finds that individuals who are low in self-control are often emotionally dysregulated and struggle to cope with stressful situations (Calkins 1994; Caspi et al 1994; Gross 1999; Posner and Rothbart 2000). Given the psychological stress that can stem from police contact under certain adverse circumstances (Del Toro et al 2019; Geller et al 2014; Jackson et al 2019; Sundaresh et al 2020), it remains possible that self-control may not consistently predict legal cynicism across groups with differential exposure to police stops. Finally, research accounting for prior police contact generally employs broad, global measures (Nivette et al 2015, 2020) without considering highly relevant features of a given police encounter (e.g., procedural justice perceptions, police intrusiveness, and so on; Geller and Fagan 2019; Tyler et al 2014).…”

Developmental science aimed at reducing inequality: Maximizing the social impact of research on executive function in context

“…Of those students in the Fragile Families and Child Well‐being Survey who reported having been stopped by police, fully 39% had been stopped at or prior to the age of 13 at the time of their first stop, with the average number of stops equal to 2.54 ( SD = 2.35), with adults' use of frisking, racial slurs, harsh language, and the threat of force not uncommon features of those encounters. Students who were stopped more frequently and who were stopped in school were more likely to report greater levels of psychological distress and greater posttraumatic stress (Jackson et al, ; see also Welch & Payne, for discussion of racial disparities in school composition, zero‐tolerance policies, and the likelihood of costly consequences including suspension and expulsion). In a similar vein, recent analyses suggest that unsafe school climate as well as increased contact with armed and uniformed school safety officers in schools are associated with clear disruptions not only in children's reports of mental health but also in their sleep, neuroendocrine function, and EF.…”

“…A new generation of scholars is pressing our field to more actively name the structural inequalities regarding who enacts threatening behaviour versus who is exposed to threat, where, and when. So, for example, additional analyses from the Fragile Families data set when children grew into adolescence (average age = 15) from 2014 to 2017 (Jackson, Fahmy, Vaughn, & Testa, ) suggest that the pervasiveness, emotional intensity, and trauma‐related sequelae of encounters with law enforcement in both neighbourhood and school settings are a domain of students' lives that few of us in developmental neuroscience of poverty and inequality have yet fully understood or accounted for (for important exceptions, see Geller, , as well as the comprehensive Levy, Heissel, Richeson, & Adam, , review on the biological and psychological costs of students' experience of race‐based stress and discrimination). Of those students in the Fragile Families and Child Well‐being Survey who reported having been stopped by police, fully 39% had been stopped at or prior to the age of 13 at the time of their first stop, with the average number of stops equal to 2.54 ( SD = 2.35), with adults' use of frisking, racial slurs, harsh language, and the threat of force not uncommon features of those encounters.…”