Revisiting the correlates of youth attitudes toward the police: The role of conservative and liberal crime ideology

Abstract

Two fairly consistent findings in the attitudes toward the police research are: (1) White citizens hold more favorable attitudes than citizens of color and (2) youth, particularly African American youth, possess less favorable perceptions than adults. However, only recently have scholars begun to explore the impact of political ideology on youths' perceptions of law enforcement. Using data collected through a survey of urban high school students, the current study extends the prior research by exploring the role conservative and liberal crime ideologies play in explaining the attitudes of adolescents toward the police. The findings indicate that conservative crime ideology and, contrary to expectations, liberal crime ideology both have significant and positive relationships with attitudes toward the police. Other measures commonly found in the existing literature, such as race, negative police-initiated contact, and vicarious police conduct, remained significant after controlling for both types of crime ideology. As a result, in the future, scholars must include ideology when examining youth attitudes toward the police or risk misspecified models.