Legal socialization during adolescence: The emerging role of school resource officers

Adolescence and later childhood are critical periods for developing attitudes toward legal authorities, a process known as legal socialization. Traditionally, scholars have understood contact with local police officers and experiences with the juvenile justice system to drive legal socialization. These interactions, and in particular how fair they are perceived to be, influence long-term views about the legitimacy of the legal system and future criminal behavior. In recent years, however, the potential for adolescent contact with police has increased exponentially through their presence in a new context: schools. In a survey of high schoolers, we explored how school-based police, school resource officers (SROs), function as an emerging nexus of legal socialization. We found that SROs’ influence extends beyond school grounds: the more procedurally just students perceived SROs to be, the more they were willing to follow their directives and to obey police outside of school. Further, procedural justice perceptions of SROs were correlated with school climate outcomes, including self-reported academic success, anxiety, and identification with the school community. Our results speak to the connection between legal socialization and other developmental processes like community engagement and support expanding robust theories of legal socialization to consider arenas that intermingle legal and non-legal authority.