How Youth Learn About Police: What It Means for Police Youth Relationships

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

If you work in policing, youth programming, or community engagement, this frustration probably feels familiar:

You want to reach young people before something goes wrong.
You want interactions to feel safer, calmer, and more predictable for everyone involved.
And yet, when you try to engage youth, it often feels like you’re already starting behind the line.
The walls are already up.
The assumptions are already formed.
The reactions, fear, tension, avoidance, can feel automatic.

Those reactions matter. When fear or mistrust shows up early in an encounter, it can shape behavior on both sides in ways that unintentionally escalate the situation. What starts as a routine interaction can deteriorate, not because a young person or an officer is “at fault,” but because expectations, stress, and uncertainty collide in real time.

So where are those perceptions coming from before youth ever interact with an officer?

A recent study helps answer a deceptively simple question that many agencies don’t ask directly enough: Who is actually teaching youth what to expect from police?

The Study: Who Teaches Youth About Police?

This study by researchers Rebecca L. Fix, Annie Pan, and Kathy Hong examined how adolescents learn about police, how that learning differs by race, and whether those sources are associated with positive or negative police encounters.

The researchers surveyed 397 youth ages 11–21 (median age 14.9) who participated in the Strategies for Youth Juvenile Justice Jeopardy and Curriculum between 2017 and 2019. Youth were from Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Importantly, the survey was administered before youth received any formal instruction through the program.

Participants were asked:

• Who taught you what you know about police and how to deal with law enforcement?
• Describe a good experience with police.
• Describe a bad experience with police.
• Rate their perceptions of and beliefs about police and peer delinquency

The context matters. Approximately 4 million youth interact with police annually, and disparities are well-documented in prior studies:

• Black male youth are 2.5 times more likely, and Latine male youth 2 times more likely, to be shot by police than White male youth.
• Black, Indigenous, Latine, and Asian American youth experience higher levels of police exposure and more aggressive encounters.
• Even non-arrest encounters are associated with higher levels of depression, emotional distress, and social stigma.

Against that backdrop, understanding how youth learn about police helps explain the expectations and tensions that may be present when officers and young people interact.

Who teaches youth about police? Examining associations between knowledge sources and police interactions

Though the onus of ensuring safe youth-police interactions falls onto police, there is a clear need to inform youth about the law, roles of police off…

Findings

Who Is Doing the Teaching? Mostly Family

Overall, youth reported learning about police primarily from:

• Caregivers (85%)
• Teachers (52%)

But when you look closer, the patterns diverge.

• Black youth were less likely to learn about police from teachers or friends, and more likely to learn from caregivers, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives.
• Latine youth were the least likely to learn about police from media.

For many families (particularly Black families), this learning includes forms of racial socialization, often referred to as “The Talk.” These conversations focus on how to behave during police encounters to reduce risk. They are meant to protect. At the same time, they can carry anticipatory stress, shaped by adults’ own experiences and fears.

Caregiver confidence in police safety varies sharply by race. Only 36% of Black adults and 45% of Latine adults trust that police will avoid excessive force, compared with 74% of White adults. As a result, the guidance youth receive at home is often shaped more by caution and concern for safety than by neutral instruction.

Example:

A Black teenager may not encounter police first through a school lesson or youth program, but through stories shared by family members, stories shaped by real encounters and a desire to keep them safe. That information can be practical and protective, but it is also emotionally charged.

From an officer’s perspective, this can show up as silence, hesitation, or fear. From a youth’s perspective, it may feel like survival. Neither side is operating in a vacuum.

How Youth Perceptions Shape Police Encounters

One of the clearest findings was the relationship between youth perceptions and their experiences with police.

Youth who already viewed police negatively were more likely to describe their encounters as negative, pointing to a cycle in which perceptions and experiences shape each other.

• 16.6% of youth reported no police encounters
• 21.8% reported only positive encounters
• 30.8% reported only negative encounters
• 30.8% reported both positive and negative encounters

Negative encounters were associated with:

• Lower perceptions of police legitimacy
• Lower levels of trust
• Greater skepticism about fairness

Youth who viewed police as trustworthy were more likely to report no encounters or only positive ones. Youth who believed officers were racist were less likely to fall into the “positive only” group.

Taken together, these findings indicate a close association between youth perceptions of police and how encounters are reported. Fear, mistrust, and perceptions of unfairness frequently co-occur with reports of negative police experiences.

For agencies, this is not only a community-relations issue, but also an officer safety and call-outcome issue. Calls involving youth who are fearful, silent, or guarded can be harder to stabilize, more difficult to assess accurately, and more likely to escalate unintentionally. Understanding the expectations young people bring into an encounter helps explain why some youth calls feel unpredictable.

What Can Agencies Actually Do?

This study does not suggest that police alone are responsible for shaping youth perceptions. One of its clearest messages is that youth are already learning about police, but often from people who may not have accurate, up-to-date information about the law, police roles, or what a safe interaction actually looks like.

Notably, police officers, community organizations, and youth programs were mentioned infrequently as sources of learning, even though these are often the spaces agencies rely on for outreach. That gap points to a great opportunity.

Here are several practical implications.

1. Train Officers Specifically for Youth Encounters

Training focused on adolescent development (particularly for youth of color) has been shown to:

• Reduce arrests
• Reduce use of force
• Increase positive interactions

Programs such as Crisis Intervention Training for Youth (CIT-Y) demonstrate measurable improvements in safety and outcomes for both officers and youth. When officers understand adolescent behavior, fear responses, and communication styles, encounters are more likely to remain calm and predictable.

For example, officers assigned to patrol areas with schools should receive adolescent-focused training and scenario practice tied directly to how youth are being taught to interpret police behavior.

2. Partner With Schools on Specific, Consistent Curriculum

Caregivers and teachers are the primary messengers, but they are rarely supported with standardized, accurate information about policing.

Agencies can:

• Partner with schools to implement age-appropriate, stand-alone curricula focused on youth rights, police roles, and safe interactions
• Align school-based instruction with how officers are trained to behave in youth encounters

Teachers already play a role in educating youth about police. Formalizing that role reduces misinformation and takes pressure off families to be the sole source of guidance.

This can look like a middle school health or civics class uses a short, standardized lesson on youth rights and police roles (developed with local agencies) so students receive consistent information before their first real encounter.

3. Intentionally Expand the Role of Community Partners

Community organizations and youth programs were rarely cited as learning sources in this study, despite evidence that community-based policing efforts can improve youth attitudes toward police.

Rather than one-off events, agencies can:

• Embed officers or trained civilian staff into existing youth programs over time
• Co-develop workshops with trusted community partners instead of leading them alone
• Support youth workers with accurate legal information so they can answer questions when police are not present

Departments can help by equipping community partners with clear, plain-language resources about police encounters, allowing them to answer questions when officers are not present.

4. Acknowledge Media Without Trying to Compete With It

Youth are immersed in social media. They see body-worn camera footage, viral clips, and national movements.

Ignoring that exposure does not help. Agencies should:

• Acknowledge that youth are seeing real examples of misconduct
• Focus on transparency and consistency, not counter-messaging
• Emphasize what safe, lawful interactions look like in everyday encounters

The goal is not to control the narrative, but to reduce uncertainty about what youth can expect in your agency.

Final Thoughts

This study highlights a key reality: youth perceptions of police are shaped long before an officer arrives on scene.

Those perceptions are influenced by family, peers, teachers, and media and also by the encounters youth have already experienced.

If agencies want interactions with youth to feel safer and more predictable, the solution cannot be one-sided. It requires:

• Informed youth
• Trained officers
• Supported caregivers and educators
• Recognition of the environments youth are navigating

Reaching youth is challenging, and it can feel like barriers are everywhere. Understanding who is shaping youth perceptions and how they are learning about police is a critical first step in designing programs and interactions that meet youth where they are.

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Carlee Ruiz

Carlee Ruiz is the founder of PoliceResearchHub, a platform that turns academic research into practical insights for law enforcement. She brings seven years of experience as a crime analyst and justice researcher, with a focus on evidence based policing, gun violence prevention, and public safety strategy. Carlee currently works as a researcher at National Policing Institute, where she supports evaluations of law enforcement programs and criminal justice initiatives across the country. Through PoliceResearchHub, she aims to make research easier to understand and more useful for the people doing the work on the ground.