It is important to understand how young adolescents come to view authorities during formative years. Experiencing, witnessing, and fearing victimization have been linked to the process of legal socialization and subsequent attitudes and behavior. In addition, procedural justice may influence adolescent perceptions of fairness of the authorities. The present study tested whether procedural justice mediated and moderated the relationship between young adolescents’ direct and vicarious victimization and developing a sense of legitimacy in authority and cynicism towards authority. A longitudinal sample of 800 Brazilian students, age 11 to 12, living in São Paulo was used to fit structural equation models to examine these relationships. The findings revealed a partial link between victimization and legal socialization. The overall mediating model significantly predicted the direct and indirect relationships between victimization and fear of crime and the formation of legitimacy and cynicism. The moderating effect of procedural justice on direct victimization also significantly predicted the formation of legitimacy. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The response to a probation violation is often a shared decision between the probation officer and the supervising judge. The result of this decision is a range of possible outcomes. One violation outcome examined here was extended supervision lengths in lieu of incarceration. This decision has been overlooked by prior research but is important to ensure equitable treatment of probationers. This study examined behavioral and organizational factors that resulted in extended supervisions for 6,034 probationers within a large county agency. On average, supervision extensions for these probationers lasted approximately 2 months (62.08 days). The decision-making framework partially explains these extensions because officers had access to poor client behavior indicators. The practical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Probation supervision is marked by the dual roles of surveillance and casework. A key feature of supervision that aligns with the goals of community safety through surveillance is the use of officer–probationer contacts. The current study explores the relationship between missed probation contacts and rearrest while on supervision in a surveillance-driven context. Logistic regression analyses modeled the effects of missed contacts on rearrests using probation data from a large supervision agency ( n = 3,809). Analyses included the overall percentage of missed contacts and missed contacts above/below the median and mean percentage of missed contacts to subsequent rearrests while on supervision. Overall, the percentage of missed contacts increased the likelihood of rearrest while on probation. Furthermore, the percentage of missed probation contacts that significantly predicted rearrest was lower than expected (4.17%). The results suggest that missing contacts while on probation has a negative impact on probation success. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Failed drug tests commonly lead to technical violations and revocation hearings for probationers. The current study extends these observations by examining whether multisubstance-using probationers also have increased odds of arrest in the community. This is important as multisubstance-using probationers may present unique public safety challenges to community corrections agencies and require intensive treatment resources and additional monitoring. Using data from a county-level probation cohort ( N = 2,257) from 2009 to 2010, a series of logistic regression analyses estimated the effects of multisubstance use on the odds of being arrested for a new offense while in the community. The findings revealed that multisubstance use and the frequency of multisubstance use increased the odds of arrest while on probation when compared with single-substance users. We discuss how agencies may best supervise multisubstance-using probationers and suggest directions for further examination.

Resumo Neste artigo, examinamos o processo de socialização legal de crianças e adolescentes ao longo do tempo. O objetivo consistiu em investigar a relação entre as experiências vividas em casa e na escola e a formação de noções de valores democráticos legítimos. Para tanto, utilizamos uma amostra de 800 estudantes (de 11 a 14 anos de idade) residentes na cidade de São Paulo. Os dados analisados envolveram variáveis de comportamento como quebra de regras, percepção das leis, crença na justiça e cinismo legal. As análises estatísticas apresentadas mostram que a justiça procedimental se constitui como principal mecanismo gerador de legitimidade das autoridades. Concluímos que socializar as crianças a fim de obedecer à legitimidade das leis resulta em instrumento de educação para a democracia.

In this article, we examine the process of legal socialization of children and adolescents over time. The objective was to investigate the relationship between the home and school experiences and the formation of legitimate democratic values. We used a sample of 800 students over four data collection periods (from 11 to 14 years old) living in the city of São Paulo. The analyzed data involved variables such as rule-violating behavior, perception of law, believe in justice, and legal cynicism. The statistical analyses show that procedural justice is the main mechanism that generates authorities’ legitimacy. We conclude that socializing children to obey the legitimacy of laws results in an educational tool for democracy.

Distribution of firearm victimization is not equal within cities. Victimization can persistently concentrate in a small number of neighborhoods, while others experience very little violence. Theorists have pointed to one possible explanation as the ability of groups to control violence using social capital. Researchers have shown this association at the U.S. county, state, and national levels. Few studies, however, have examined the relationship between neighborhood social capital and violence over time. This study uses longitudinal data to ask whether neighborhood social capital both predicts and is influenced by firearm victimization over 3 years in Philadelphia. The results of several regression analyses suggest that trusting others and firearm victimization are inversely related over time. Implications for neighborhood policy planning and social capital as a theoretical framework are discussed.

The legal socialization framework expounds individual attitudes towards authority. The current study tested whether the attitudes of Brazilian adolescents towards social authorities (parents and teachers) explain later attitudes towards legal authority (the police). Data were obtained from three waves of a longitudinal study of Brazilian youth in São Paulo (ages 11–13; 50 per cent female) between 2016 and 2018. The time-ordered data are uniquely capable of testing the legal socialization framework as adolescent social spheres expand beyond the domestic domain. The findings of the structural equation models support the claim that attitudes towards social authorities explain later attitudes towards legal authority. The findings also paint a more complicated and nuanced picture of how spheres of authority are related.