Learning about the binding nature of the law: police violence, criminal offending and adolescent legal socialization

Legal socialization—the process through which individuals develop an understanding of the law and its purpose—unfolds throughout the life course, but childhood and adolescence are particularly formative periods for shaping legal attitudes. This study examines adolescent legal socialization and assesses the extent to which exposure to different policing practices, including police officers assaulting members of the public, is associated with changes in beliefs about the legitimacy of the law and an increased propensity to criminally offend. We focus on adolescents aged 11 to 14 in São Paulo, Brazil, a city where authoritarian policing is well-documented. Drawing on data from the São Paulo Legal Socialization Study—a cohort-based, four-wave longitudinal survey of 800 adolescents fielded between 2016 and 2019—we estimate contemporaneous and cumulative effects of exposure to different policing practices on legal legitimacy beliefs and crime involvement during adolescence. We find a robust association between exposure to police violence and (a) weakened beliefs about the legitimacy of the law and (b) an increased propensity to engage in offending behavior over time. Results also suggest that decreased perceptions of legal legitimacy may mediate the effects of exposure to police violence on self-reported offending behavior. We conclude that secondary exposure to police brutality can undermine the development of legitimacy beliefs among adolescents undergoing legal socialization in a city where violent and aggressive policing strategies are common. As legitimacy beliefs erode, internal constraints against rule-breaking may loosen, increasing adolescents’ propensity to engage in criminal behavior.