Legal socialization is the process through which individuals develop their attitudes and relationships with the law. Although different types of socialization have been identified, four primary assumptions drive the perspective. These include ubiquity (process occurs in multiple contexts), continuity (process occurs across the lifetime), foundationality (law is an important regulatory institution), and reciprocity (law and citizens are influencing each other). The procedural justice model of legal socialization proposes that direct and vicarious police interactions judged to be procedurally unjust lead to lower levels of police legitimacy, higher levels of legal cynicism, and ultimately, lower compliance with the law. Recent scholarship has extended this model to non-legal authorities, finding that procedurally just interactions with parents and teachers improve child outcomes. Given its novelty, models assessing parental effects on legal attitudes have yet to consider how problematic child behaviors, including delinquency, contribute to the legal socialization process. Using 8 waves of data from a community sample of Swiss children (N = 1360), the primary goal of this study is to identify the potential direct, indirect, and reciprocal effects of child externalizing problem behaviors (as measured by aggression and hyperactive/impulsive/inattention) and parenting behaviors (as measured as prosocial and aversive) on legal cynicism. In addition, this study seeks to identify reciprocity within concepts from the procedural justice model, namely between legal cynicism and delinquency. Multivariate Latent Curve models with Structured Residuals (LCM-SR) were used to assess these relationships while also distinguishing “between-person” and “within-person” changes in these constructs over time. Results demonstrated that the relationship between child behaviors and parenting behaviors was not reciprocal, but aversive parenting did have a direct relationship with legal cynicism and delinquency over time. An unconditional LCM-SR model demonstrated that legal cynicism and delinquency were related both between-person and within-person over time. However, the reciprocal effects were inconclusive. While this study did not identify conclusive evidence of reciprocity, the results do provide more support for the ubiquity assumption, i.e., legal socialization occurs in nonlegal contexts. Parenting behaviors during childhood do influence legal cynicism and delinquency from adolescence to early adulthood.

Blalock’s (1967) minority threat perspective is one of the most empirically investigated theories of crime control in criminological literature. A large body of research has tested this perspective and established a link between minority context and increased criminal justice controls. The perceived threat mechanisms hypothesized to facilitate this link, however, have received relatively scant attention. In addition, no multidimensional scale of perceived minority threat has been developed. These oversights have significantly impeded the advancement of research testing the empirical validity and generalizability of Blalock’s premises across racial and ethnic groups.

Against this backdrop, this dissertation extends prior work by conducting three separate but interrelated studies. The first study focuses on the development and validation of a multidimensional Perceived Latino Threat Scale (PLTS). The second study investigates how the PLTS can inform the relationship between Latino context and punitive border control sentiment. The third and final study assesses the psychometrics of another multidimensional scale of perceived threat—the Perceived Black Threat Scale (PBTS), and examines the structural invariance and distinctness of the PBTS and PLTS.

Using data collected from two college samples, I relied on a variety of different methods across the three empirical studies, including confirmatory factor analyses, bivariate and partial correlation analyses, and ordinary least squares regression. Overall, the findings suggest that both the PLTS and PBTS are multidimensional constructs that are structurally invariant and empirically distinct. In addition, perceived Latino threat significantly influenced punitive border control sentiment, but did not surface as a mediating mechanism linking ethnic context to immigration attitudes. Furthermore, whereas objective Latino population context did not demonstrate significant effects on either perceived Latino threat or punitive border control sentiment, the results emphasized perceived Latino context as a key moderator in the relationship between perceived Latino threat and punitive border control sentiment. Thus, the findings support the multidimensionality of perceived threat, as well as the hypothesized link between perceived threat and punitive controls, but raises key concerns about the generalizability of Blalock’s perspective to explain the threat-control process of Latinos. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

This study examined whether periods of secure confinement in juvenile detention, jails, and prisons are associated with short- and longer-term increases in adolescent males’ internalizing problems during adolescence and young adulthood. Data came from a longitudinal community sample of 506 male adolescents who were assessed every six months for three years and annually for ten subsequent years. At each assessment, participants reported on their confinement experiences and internalizing problems (i.e., anxiety, depression) during the recall period. Fixed-effects models examined within-individual changes in internalizing problems before, during, and after youth reported any overnight stay in a correctional facility, after controlling for the time-varying confounds of externalizing problem behaviors and previous justice system contact. Additionally, this study tested whether changes in the participants’ internalizing problems varied depending on the confinement facility (i.e., juvenile detention, jail, prison). Overall, results indicated that internalizing problems increased during periods where participants had been confined in a facility. In contrast, there were no changes in internalizing problems in the period prior to confinement and internalizing problems returned to baseline levels in the year following confinement. Facility-specific analyses indicated confinement in prison was associated with the largest increase in internalizing problems. Findings from this study indicate confinement does influence internalizing problems and interventions sensitive to internalizing problems should focus on providing services during confinement and immediate reentry period.

Although the interpersonal (e.g., deceitful, manipulative, grandiose) and affective (e.g., lack of empathy/guilt) features of adult psychopathy have been associated with an increased risk for criminal activity (Boccio & Beaver, 2018; Hare, 1993; Porter, Birt, & Boer, 2001), there remains a subgroup of individuals with these features who are able to avoid being convicted of a serious crime. However, it remains unclear what factors differentiate individuals with high psychopathic traits who are convicted for serious offending from those who are not convicted. To address this gap, the current study aims to answer the following: 1.) Do economic, social, or intelligence factors differentiate convicted versus non-convicted individuals with high psychopathic traits? and 2.) Are non-convicted individuals with high psychopathic traits less likely to engage in self-report offending than convicted individuals with these traits? Data was drawn from the youngest and oldest cohorts of the Pittsburgh Youth Study (N=806), a longitudinal study that followed adolescent (ages 13-16) males from Pittsburgh, PA over 22 years in order to examine the development of delinquency, substance use, and mental health problems. Significant between-group differences were examined using ANOVA and chi-squared analyses. Results showed no difference between convicted and non-convicted men with high psychopathic traits in terms of intelligence or relationship quality. However, non-convicted men with high psychopathic traits were more likely to be employed and less likely to be on public assistance that men with high psychopathic traits. Further, high psychopathic trait non-convicted men were less likely to report adult offending than their convicted counterparts, but were more likely to offend than men with low psychopathic traits who were not convicted. These results suggest that men with high psychopathic traits who elude conviction exhibit better adult adjustment than men with these characteristics that have been convicted, even though they report engaging in adult offending.

Teacher assessments are often used alongside parent assessments to identify behavioral problems and patterns in school-aged children. These assessments can aid in the diagnosis of disruptive behavior disorders and are used to screen children for targeted delinquency prevention programs. Although researchers have heavily studied the relationship between parent and teacher assessments, not as much research has analyzed teacher assessments alone, specifically semiannual teacher assessments. Teacher assessments are typically conducted during the fall semester, normally a couple months into the school year, or during the spring semester, normally a couple months after the winter break period. Using data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS), we aimed to determine the temporal stability and predictive utility of semiannual teacher assessments of children's behavioral problems from 2nd grade to 5th grade. Results showed that mean assessment scores increased from the fall to the spring semester across all 4 grades. We also found that teacher assessments of behavioral problems in grade school were significantly correlated with future serious violence. Although our statistical model did not identify a specific time period or semester when these assessments were most predictive, we observed a pattern where the spring semesters were more predictive for the younger grades, and the fall semesters were more predictive for the older grades. Future research could aim to understand why this pattern exists and what its implications are.

Marijuana is currently the mostly widely used illicit drug in the U.S., and has been for multiple decades (Johnston et. al., 2016). Despite a growing belief that marijuana use is not harmful, over 4 million Americans have met criteria for marijuana use disorders in the past year alone (CBHSQ, 2015). According to marijuana trajectory studies, about a third of marijuana users will end up quitting later in life, but some \u2014 such as those who meet criteria for dependence \u2014 have a much greater difficultly quitting. Therefore, by looking at marijuana users who were successful in quitting, and comparing them to ongoing adult marijuana users, factors that may assist in helping an individual quit \u2014 such as certain motivations for quitting \u2014 may be identified. To study these issues, data was collected from 507 participants from the Pittsburgh Youth Study. It was found that adolescents who used marijuana weekly for at least one year were likely to be ongoing marijuana users in adulthood and that adolescents who had a warm relationship with their primary caretaker were likely to have quit marijuana by adulthood. It was also found that Black participants were more likely to have legal, monetary, and religious reasons for quitting than were White participants. Furthermore, participants who used regularly in adolescence were likely to list legal reasons, as well as a concern that marijuana use was needed to feel normal. Finally, it was found that not a single motivation for quitting marijuana was associated with a shorter period of abstinence. The implications of these findings for motivations to quit marijuana are the focus of the discussion.