JUVENILE ATTITUDES TOWARD POLICE: A NATIONAL STUDY

The importance of public attitudes toward the police is illustrated by its growing coverage in the academic literature. while a fair amount is known about how adults perceive the police, much less is known about how juveniles perceive them. Using data from the 1999 Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), we investigate factors that influence the formation of juvenile attitudes toward police. Using OLS, we examine the relative influence of five sets of variables-drug use and acceptance, social environment, encounters with police, victimization, and race-on juveniles 'global satisfaction with police. Our findings indicate that acceptance of drug use has the most powerful influence on juveniles' level of satisfaction with police, followed by personal victimization, race, presence of parents, and negative encounters with police, respectively.