No abstract

Growing concern with the effect of negative public attitudes toward the police on police‐community polarization and morale and effectiveness has led to numerous efforts to improve the image of the policeman and to facilitate more positive relationships with the community. It is proposed that the eflectiveness of such programs is hindered by their failure to consider that public attitudes toward the police do not exist in isolation, but are a part of a broader complex of attitudes toward the system of legal justice and its various representatives. Data from four different samples of residents of a western state provide some tentative support for this hypothesis. Implications of the data for programs designed to improve police‐community relationships are discussed.

No abstract

Contrary to popular stereotypes, current studies of adolescent populations suggest that Black teens are less likely to use illicit drugs than are White teens. This study investigates the extent to which differences in religiosity are responsible for racial differences in drug use. Using data from a national survey of United States high school seniors, our results indicate that religion does provide some protection from drug use by adolescents. However, religiosity has less of an impact on the drug use of Black adolescents, perhaps as a result of the diverse roles of the Black church.

Curbing adolescent substance abuse is a national priority in the United States. To effectively allocate resources it is imperative that antecedents and correlates of drug use across diverse populations be understood. Racial and ethnic differences in drug use have yet to be explained. Because family characteristics are known to vary across race/ethnic groups, and prior research suggests a connection between family characteristics and adolescent drug use, this study investigates the impact of family on race/ethnic differences in drug use. Using data from a national household survey, we found that although socioeconomic and demographic characteristics alone explained drug use differences between Latinos and non-Latino whites, the differences between Black and white adolescents could not be explained by either structural or functional differences in the family. Furthermore, it appears that the single-parent Black family provides a greater protection against drug use than does the two-biological-parent Black family. Our findings suggest that the development of policy based on a knowledge of correlates of substance use within the white community may be both inefficient and ineffective when applied to minority communities.