Legitimacy and Institutional Misconduct Among a Cohort of Serious and Violent Incarcerated Youth

In the current study, we examine the impact that perceptions of legitimacy of laws and authority have on the institutional misconduct behavior of a large cohort of serious and violent incarcerated youth. Negative binomial analyses examining the official misconduct of more than 4,000 incarcerated youth during their entire term of incarceration indicated that youth with higher legitimacy perceptions (as measured by the R-PACT) incurred a significantly lower number of total misconduct incidents than those with lower legitimacy perceptions, net the effects of controls typically associated with institutional misconduct perpetration. Youth with higher legitimacy perceptions also perpetrated a significantly lower number of violent misconduct incidents than those with lower legitimacy perceptions, net other controls. Research and policy implications are discussed.