The Unintended Consequences of Being Stopped or Arrested: An Exploration of the Labeling Mechanisms Through Which Police Contact Leads to Subsequent Delinquency

Abstract

Much debate has taken place regarding the merits of aggressive policing strategies such as “stop, question, and frisk.” Labeling theory suggests that police contact may actually increase delinquency because youth who are stopped or arrested are excluded from conventional opportunities, adopt a deviant identity, and spend time with delinquent peers. But, few studies have examined the mechanisms through which police contact potentially enhances offending. The current study uses four waves of longitudinal data collected from middle‐school students (N = 2,127) in seven cities to examine the deviance amplification process. Outcomes are compared for youth with no police contact, those who were stopped by police, and those who were arrested. We use propensity score matching to control for preexisting differences among the three groups. Our findings indicate that compared with those with no contact, youth who are stopped or arrested report higher levels of future delinquency and that social bonds, deviant identity formation, and delinquent peers partially mediate the relationship between police contact and later offending. These findings suggest that programs targeted at reducing the negative consequences of police contact (i.e., poor academic achievement, deviant identity formation, and delinquent peer associations) might reduce the occurrence of secondary deviance.

Arrested Development: Does the Grade Level at Which Juveniles Experience Arrest Matter?

“…This allows for a more theoretically relevant analysis, as the indirect effect of arrest through delinquent peers, for instance, is influenced by the inclusion of the indirect effect through prosocial peer exclusion. Labeling theory and its extensions indicate that the direct effect of justice system involvement on delinquency should disappear once the mechanisms that account for increased delinquency are taken into account (e.g., see [7,60]); yet prior research has shown that a direct effect between justice system contact and delinquency remains even after accounting for indirect effects [40,78]. Therefore, a direct effect between arrest and delinquency is included to capture any effects not accounted for by the mediators.…”

“…Prior research has highlighted the central role of deviant group involvement in the labeling process [9,40,78] but few studies have examined how the relationship between justice system involvement and delinquent groups varies during adolescence.…”

“…Although prior research indicates that arrest, as well as less severe forms of justice system contact such as being stopped and questioned, have similar detrimental effects [13,77,78], the focus of this study is on arrest because this experience is more likely to draw attention from others and elicit stronger exclusionary reactions than simply being stopped. Longitudinal data provide a 3-year window for each of the groups, such that control variables are measured in the 6th, 7th, or 8th grade; arrest and mediators are measured in 7th, 8th, or 9th grade; and delinquency is measured in 8th, 9th, or 10th grade for the respective cohorts, with same-grade counterparts serving as comparison groups.…”

“…In fact, a sizeable body of research indicates that both minor (e.g., being stopped and questioned by the police) and more serious (e.g., incarceration) forms of justice system contact are linked to consequences such as attenuation of prosocial bonds, involvement with deviant groups, and delinquent attitudes and behaviors [8,9,28,47,53,77,78]. Much less is known, however, about how the timing of justice system involvement during adolescence affects these outcomes.…”

“…Labeling theory asserts that contact with the justice system creates or reinforces deviant labels, which affects offending through three primary mechanisms: development of a deviant identity, social exclusion and prosocial bond attenuation, and involvement with delinquent peer groups [7,45,46,60,78]. Because "age-graded transitions…create both opportunities for crime and differential probabilities of detection and labeling by official agents of social control," researchers have called for examinations of labeling processes from a developmental framework to more fully understand how justice system interventions affect criminal and noncriminal outcomes ( [63]:253).…”