The age-graded effects of psychosocial maturity on legal socialization across the adolescent developmental course in youth offenders

Abstract

This study, using a sample of youth offenders from the Pathways to Desistance Study (N = 1354), examines Greenberger and Sorensen’s model of “psychosocial maturity” as a predictor of legal socialization (legal cynicism and legitimacy) across the adolescent developmental course, as well as the differential importance of this relationship by age. Psychosocial maturity significantly predicted lower levels of legal cynicism, but also lower levels of legitimacy, from ages 14–25. Yet, when considering the salience of these relationships by age, results suggest that the relationship between psychosocial maturity and legitimacy may show little variation as adolescent offenders age, but that the salience of psychosocial maturity on explaining patterns of legal cynicism declines with age during development into emerging adulthood. This work’s potential implications for promising interventions that foster psychosocial maturity in early adolescence to reduce legal cynicism of youth who have offended or are at high-risk of offending are discussed.

Notes

1 Correlation analyses were carried out to determine if demographic characteristics were associated with missingness at the final data point. Findings indicated that Black and Hispanic participants were more likely to have been lost to attrition at the final data point. Male participants were more likely than female participants to have been lost to attrition at that point also. Socioeconomic status (SES) was unrelated to missingness. It should be noted that all significant correlation coefficients indicated relatively weak relationships with missingness also.

2 The legal cynicism items included in this scale were: Laws are meant to be broken; It is okay to do anything you want; There are no right or wrong ways to make money; If I have a fight with someone, it is no one else's business; A person has to live without thinking about the future.

3 There were some concerns related to the relatively low reliability of the cynicism measures at earlier waves. For this reason, longitudinal measurement invariance was tested using the sem function in Stata 16. Each measure of cynicism at each time point was assessed as an observable variable contributing to the overall latent cynicism score across all waves. Measurement invariance was then tested between age groups. Under various assumptions of no constraints and constraints of equal coefficients, equal constants, and equal error variances; each time the test failed to reject the null hypothesis of measurement invariance by age.

4 The following individual items were used to assess legitimacy: I have a great deal of respect for the police; Overall, the police are honest; I feel proud of the police; I feel people should support the police; The police should be allowed to hold a person suspected of a serious crime until they get enough evidence to charge them; The police should be allowed to stop people on the street and require them to identify themselves; The courts generally guarantee everyone a fair hearing (trial); The basic rights of citizens are protected in the courts; Many people convicted of crimes in the courts are actually innocent. [Reverse coded]; Overall, judges in the courts here are honest; Court decisions here are almost always fair.

5 There may be some concerns about correlation of these control variables with psychosocial maturity and the potential for multicollinearity. While there was some correlation between these variables, these correlations were all weak to moderate and such findings would be expected. This is actually consistent with the rationale outlined in this section regarding the desire to study psychosocial maturity specifically as a measure of adult “self-identity” and investment in social responsibility, rather than studying other facets of the expanded view of psychosocial maturity.