How Student Perceptions of Police Influence Crime Reporting

References:

Burden, M., Melde, C., McGarrell, E. F., Heinze, J. E., Franzen, S., & Michaels, K. (2023). Adolescent attitudes toward police and crime reporting intentions. Journal of Crime and Justice 46(5), 593-606. https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648X.2023.2204242

Gang Resistance Education And Training (G.R.E.A.T.). Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. https://www.great-online.org/

This video was created and produced by Katy Hunter, Research Assistant at the National Center for School Safety.

Transcript

Makayla Burden: My name’s Makayla Burden. I’m a fourth year doctoral student in Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice. I’m also a graduate research assistant, and my research primarily focuses on victimization. While working with Dr. Chris Melde, he had great data from the comprehensive school safety initiative that was funded by the National Institute of Justice. The study was designed to help foster a positive school climate and included a lot of victimization variables, and so since my research focuses on victimization, I was very excited to explore the data and see what questions could be examined. This research evaluates two cohorts of fifth and sixth graders attitudes toward police and how that affects their crime reporting intentions. We also examined if other factors such as prior victimization, fear of victimization, perceived risk of victimization and delinquency also influenced their crime reporting intentions.

It is important to understand the relationship between youth and law enforcement officers. Positive interactions between police and youth can help foster healthy relationships and cooperation between civilians and law enforcement. Alternatively, negative interactions can lead to negative attitudes toward police that can have lasting effects on youths willingness to cooperate with law enforcement. A particularly important aspect of the relationship between juveniles and the police is their willingness to report crime to law enforcement, unfortunately, many adolescent victimization go unreported and they are significantly less likely than adult victimization to come to the attention of law enforcement. Therefore, it would make sense that youth who have negative attitudes and perceptions towards the police would be less willing to interact with them and are therefore less willing to report a crime.

And unfortunately, research suggests that youth at a high risk of victimization, especially those who themselves are involved in crime and delinquency, may hold less than favorable impressions of the police. These youth may also resort to dangerous coping mechanisms and forms of self-help such as weapon-carrying. So examining this relationship could help us further understand why juveniles choose not to report and what can be done to encourage positive perceptions and foster more cooperation. The major finding was that for both cohorts, attitudes towards police predicted reporting intentions, meaning the more positive their attitudes toward police, the more likely they were to report crimes that they had witnessed. Additionally perceived risk of victimization was also a significant predictor of reporting intentions.

So in other words, youth who had a greater perceived risk of victimization were more likely to report crimes they had witnessed. And then in regards to demographics, Black students in both cohorts of fifth and sixth graders have lower intentions to report to law enforcement officials than the White students. There were also some other findings in the study, however, they varied between the two cohorts. It was surprising that the two cohorts had multiple findings that were different from each other, especially since we did not find that the two cohorts were significantly different from one another. So for example, in Cohort 1, fear of victimization was associated with an increase in reporting intentions, while in Cohort 2, delinquency was associated with a decrease in intentions to report to the police.

Our study examines intentions to report crimes they had witnessed to police. So we were unable to capture intentions to report to individuals other than the police, like parents or teachers. We were unable to also look at actual reporting papers or crimes the students were direct victims of, so future research should examine these additional reporting types and behaviors for a more complete picture of how attitudes toward police may affect them. Similarly, many of the survey questions varied between in school and out-of-school experiences, so future research should include both types of experiences for every measure. The findings of this study indicate that reporting intentions are strongly associated with attitudes toward police. Makayla: This suggests that we should find ways to foster more positive attitudes toward police so that youth feel more comfortable reporting crimes to law enforcement officials. It may be particularly beneficial to focus on improving officer-student relations among Black students as they have less favorable attitudes and have fewer reporting intentions. And then prior research has shown that programs designed to create positive interactions between youth and police officers as well as other school-based programs that involve law enforcement, such as drug abuse resistant education and gang-resistant education and training can improve adolescent attitudes toward police and can have long-lasting effects. Therefore, intentional outreach between law enforcement and students can be incredibly beneficial.