Rebecca L. Fix, Adam D. Fine & Pamela A. Matson (2023): Gender and race influence youths’ responses to a training on the law and safe police interactions, Justice Evaluation Journal, DOI: 10.1080/24751979.2023.2179418
Rebecca L. Fix, Ph.D., Monique Jindal, M.D., M.P.H., Adam Fine, Ph.D. (Publication forthcoming, 2023)
Police receive extensive training due to the complexity and challenges of their work. Surprisingly, most police officers receive minimal training on how to understand and interact with adolescents. The current study included data from 1,030 law enforcement officers from 24 police departments evaluating perceived readiness to interact and work with adolescents in the community. We examined overall training needs, and then tested how experience in law enforcement and position or rank impacted self-identified training needs. Rank was associated with police officer perceptions of adolescents and related training needs. Compared with patrol officers, school resource officers indicated that they believed they had the skills needed to effectively work with adolescents [P = 0.001, odds ration (OR) = 2.5]. Beat or area patrol officers were significantly less likely than school resource officers to report feeling equipped to work with adolescents who have experienced trauma compared with new recruits (P < 0.001, OR = 0.3) and other non-patrol police officers (P = 0.001, OR = 0.6). School resource officers were significantly more likely to view adolescents as positive assets to the community (P = 0.003, OR = 2.8), and were significantly less likely to understand why Black adolescents or other adolescents of colour might mistrust police compared with both new recruits (P < 0.001, OR = 0.2) and patrol officers (P < 0.001, OR = 0.5). Overarching training needs are illuminated by these unique data.
Rebecca L Fix, Jeffrey Aaron, and Sheldon Greenberg
Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 15, Issue 4, Pages 2252–2268 | Published online: 27 July 2021
Jessica Salley Riccardi, Gabriella Celeste and Anastasia Dimitropoulos
Police Practice and Research, Vol 23, Issue 2, Pages 174-194 | Published online: 12 Jul 2021
This pilot study assessed whether police officers and juvenile justice personnel reported improved attitudes toward youth and knowledge about de-escalation skills after attending Policing the Teen Brain, a training created to prevent arrests by improving officer-youth interactions. Pre- and post-intervention surveys asked about participant attitudes toward adolescents, adolescence as a stressful stage, and punishing youth in the justice system. Among the 232 participants, paired sample t-tests indicated significant differences between mean pre- and post-survey responses on nearly all survey subscales. A hierarchical regression model significantly predicted improvement in knowledge, with educated, female participants most likely to improve knowledge of de-escalation skills.
Matthew C. Aalsma, Katherine Schwartz, and Wanzhu Tu
Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Volume 57, Issue 7, Pages 415-430 | Published online: 09 Feb 2019
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