Purpose

The recent rise in homicide has led to ongoing debate on the role of law enforcement due to research that suggests cynicism in the legal system can be criminogenic and lead to violence. Understanding how and why legal cynicism develops is important to improve police-community relationships and to lower crime.

Methods

The current study uses a national data set and structural equation modeling to understand how familial factors such as parental incarceration, experiencing adverse childhood experiences, and youth race are predictive of legal cynicism and how this might be mediated through experiencing police stops.

Results

Findings suggest race, parental incarceration, and ACEs are all directly predictive of police stops and indirectly predictive of legal cynicism. Only race and parental incarceration directly predict legal cynicism.

Conclusions

Given the current concerns over rising violent crime rates in urban cities and the quality and nature of police-citizen interactions, our results provide a timely analysis of risk factors contributing to the development of legal cynicism. Findings suggest that, not only must we be concerned with the well-documented impact of police contact, we should expand our view to include experiences with parental incarceration. Implications for practitioners and criminal justice professionals are discussed.

中文翻译：

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法律犬儒主义的前因揭开：父母监禁、种族和 ACE 对其发展的影响

目的

最近凶杀案的增加引发了关于执法作用的持续争论，因为研究表明，法律体系中的犬儒主义可能会导致犯罪并导致暴力。了解法律犬儒主义如何以及为何发展对于改善警察与社区的关系和降低犯罪率非常重要。

方法

目前的研究使用国家数据集和结构方程模型来了解父母入狱、经历不良童年经历和青少年种族等家庭因素如何预测法律犬儒主义，以及如何通过经历警察拦截来调节这种犬儒主义。

结果

研究结果表明，种族、父母入狱和 ACE 都可以直接预测警察拦截，间接预测法律愤世嫉俗。只有种族和父母的监禁直接预示着法律的犬儒主义。

结论

鉴于目前人们对城市暴力犯罪率上升以及警察与公民互动的质量和性质的担忧，我们的研究结果及时分析了导致法律犬儒主义发展的风险因素。调查结果表明，我们不仅必须关注警方接触的有据可查的影响，还应该扩大我们的视野，将父母被监禁的经历包括在内。讨论了对从业人员和刑事司法专业人员的影响。