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.

对警察研究态度的两个相当一致的发现是：（1）白人公民比有色人种公民持有更有利的态度；（2）青少年，特别是非裔美国青年，比成年人持有更有利的看法。然而，直到最近，学者们才开始探讨政治意识形态对青少年执法观念的影响。本研究利用对城市高中生的调查收集的数据，通过探索保守派和自由派犯罪意识形态在解释青少年对警察的态度方面所发挥的作用，扩展了先前的研究。研究结果表明，保守的犯罪意识形态和与预期相反的自由主义犯罪意识形态都与对警察的态度有着显着和积极的关系。现有文献中常见的其他措施，例如种族、警察发起的消极接触和替代警察行为，在控制了两种类型的犯罪意识形态后仍然很重要。因此，未来学者们在研究年轻人对警察的态度时必须纳入意识形态，否则就有可能错误指定模型。