Negotiating Unwelcome Police Encounters: The Intergenerational Transmission of Conduct Norms

Abstract

Research on police—citizen relations is largely centered on how police officers treat citizens, with much less attention given to how citizens behave toward officers or how they may counsel others to behave if they are stopped by an officer. Several studies report that citizens’ demeanor affects the way they are treated by police, but researchers have neglected the larger question of whether, and if so how, citizens prepare for their contacts with officers prior to face-to-face encounters. The question is particularly salient for youths living in high-crime, inner-city neighborhoods where they are at high risk of having frequent and unwelcome police interactions. This article examines an important way in which such encounters are structured, by the transmission of a set of conduct norms from one generation to the next.