Personal and Vicarious Experiences that Shape Incarcerated Youths’ Perceptions of Injustice- Comparing Two Measures

ABSTRACT

We compared the relationships between incarcerated youths’ injustice perceptions and demographic variables and personal and vicarious experiences with the justice system using indexes of injustice derived from Matza and Tyler. The two injustice frameworks represent different academic traditions in ways that raise different prospects. Matza contextualizes his formulation of injustice in group processes that emphasize shared neutralization of regulating norms because of injustice. That emphasis is absent in Tyler. Tyler’s work has led to an invariance claim across demographics that is not postulated by Matza. We analyzed data from the Florida Faith and Community-Based Delinquency Treatment Initiative. We found nonwhite youths perceived more injustice as measured by both indexes. In a boys-only subsample, younger boys perceived more injustice measured by the Tyler index. Vicarious exposure via friends’ experiences with police related to higher perceived levels of injustice only on the Matza index. We encourage researchers to be precise in their operationalizations and measurement of injustice perceptions and to consider the theoretical grounding of their research in making injustice measurement choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Juvenile justice
• youth perceptions
• injustice
• justice perceptions

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of our early project team, including Ron Akers and our research assistants, especially Carrie L. Cook, Erin Lane, Beth Parker, and Gretchen Pendell. We also thank the members of the Faith and Community-Based Delinquency Treatment Initiative and the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice for their cooperation and participation in the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Items

1. Damaged or set fire to school property

2. Damaged or set fire to other property

3. Broke into a house, building, or car in order to take something (when no one was there)

4. Robbed or held up a place of business (store, gas station, bank, taxi, etc.)

5. Robbed a person (street robbery, mugging, purse snatching, holdup in a house or car; exclude business robberies)

6. Tried to or beat somebody up or threatened someone with a weapon (tried to shoot, stab, cut, beat, strangle, or strong-arm someone, even if no one was hurt)

7. Stole or boosted something (stole from a till, shoplifted, picked pockets, or took something without owner’s knowledge; exclude car theft)

8. Stole a car, truck or motorcycle

9. Used check or credit cards illegally (forgery, used a stolen or bad credit card, passed a bad check)

10. Obtained prescriptions illegally (forged prescription, conned a doctor for Rx)

11. Ran cons or scams (defrauded person, business, or government)

12. Dealt or delivered drugs (made, sold, smuggled, or moved)

13. Provided sex for money (prostitution)

14. Committed or attempted homicide

15. Committed or attempted sex by force (rape)

16. Been in gang or posse fights

17. Possessed marijuana or hashish

18. Possessed hard drugs such as cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP, and LSD

Notes

1. FY 2004–2005 78% (n = 43,028) of admissions to secure detention facilities in Florida were males (Florida Outcome Evaluation Report, 2006). Moreover, 49% of admissions were White (combined Hispanic and non-Hispanic), 48% Black, and 3% were of another race including Alaskan, American Indian, Asian, or Pacific Islander.

2. Because we have a small sample size and do not have detail on the race and ethnicities of those who reported they were biracial or multiracial, we chose to dichotomize race to compare white to nonwhite youth in line with common practice in the literature (Miller & Foster, 2002; Tatar et al., 2012). However, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) (e.g., 2006, p. 58) sometimes combines White and Hispanic youth for analyses, so we also ran all four regression models comparing White and Hispanic youth to nonwhite non-Hispanic youth, including biracial and multiracial youth in the nonwhite non-Hispanic category. The only substantive differences in the models were that for Model 1: “Full Sample Matza Injustice Index” the dad arrest variable reached significance at the 0.05 level in the alternative models, but only approached significance (p = 0.10) in the reported models. Additionally, in Model 4: “Boys only Tyler Injustice Index”, the coefficient representing youth with more arrests (2+ arrests) is significant at the 0.05 level in the reported models, but only approached significance in the alternative models (p = 0.07). All other substantive results were consistent in direction and significance level between for both measures of race.

3. Youths who responded “not applicable” or “don’t know” were coded into the “no” category because socialization from a mother or father who has been arrested did not happen in these cases.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention under Grant number: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Florida Department of Juvenile Justice 2003-JB-BX-K071 and Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.