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Youth Perceptions of the Police: Identifying Trajectories

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Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

Published online on

Abstract

The relevance of examining juveniles’ attitudes toward the police has been firmly established in the literature. Employing group-based trajectory modeling, the present study builds upon this previous research by estimating police attitudinal trajectories among a general sample of youths. The models produced a 5-group solution for both males and females, with four of the trajectories remaining relatively stable over the time observed and one noticeably experiencing a downward trend. Furthermore, of the items making up the police attitudinal scale, for several of the groups, the item measuring prejudice most consistently oscillated away from the trajectory profile. Policy implications are discussed.