Exploring the Interplay of Procedural Justice Perceptions, Criminal Resistance, and Gun Carrying Behaviors in Predicting Violent Juvenile Offending
Hartman, Megan Ariel
Citations
Abstract
Criminal justice research is dominated by social learning, strain, and control theories to determine the factors involved in motivating an individual to commit a crime. These theories have provided insight to the effectiveness of deterrence, restraint, and the overall impact strain has on an individual’s attitude and their perspective of not only society, but of the law and entities which govern them. However, not many studies in this field have evaluated the impact of an adjudicated juvenile’s susceptibility or resistance levels on their criminal habits, the impact of procedural justice perceptions on criminal habits, and further determining joint effects between these two concepts and gun-carrying habits. This study employs ordinary least squares and robust regression methods to determine potential interactions between resistance levels and perceptions of procedural justice. The impact of a variety of factors were also evaluated on subgroups rooted in gang-involvement and location specific models. Results indicate that high resistance levels and positive perceptions of procedural justice reduce a male juvenile’s frequency of violent offending. Several control variables also exhibit significance, which highlights the multifaceted nature of factors which influence crime habits in juveniles.
