This dissertation draws on criminology, social and developmental psychology and urban sociology in order to understand how contextual, situational and individual characteristics contribute to young people's relationships with and attitudes toward the police. The study's key question is: is ethnicity salient for understanding people's views of the police in Hackney? In answering this question, I adopt Bronfenbrenner's (1979) systemic framework, which proposes that the developing individual is embedded within a complex structure of influences that shape perceptions and behaviours. This mixed-methods study examines different aspects of the relationships between the police and ethnic minorities in the London Borough of Hackney using qualitative (interviews with community leaders and focus groups with secondary school pupils) and quantitative (surveys) research methods. I explore different levels of association with the police (community and individual) based on the understanding that cultures and historical attitudes influence community/police relationships. I also explore different modes of contact (direct and vicarious) within different settings (neighbourhood and school). I examine the applicability of the 'race and ethnicity' paradigm in explaining current police/minority dynamics by taking a nuanced view of these often artificially broadened categories. I consider other influences, such us social groupings and history of migration as well as community assets of collective efficacy and organisational capacity. The empirical work presented here links knowledge construction about the police to identity processes in order to help understand communities' attitudes generally, and children's specifically. As such, it provides insight into the process of legal socialisation. I explore the relationship between general attitudes about the police (in schools under the Safer School Partnerships scheme and in neighbourhoods) and specific attitudes, including police legitimacy, treatment, performance and pupils' willingness to help them (Tyler, 2006). I find that ethnic background has a limited relationship to general attitudes toward the police, with the exception of Black African pupils, indicating that the use of knowledge about the police interacts with identity development processes for some but not for others. Age, social capital, pupils' association with crime and contact with the police are more reliably related to attitudes toward the police. Surprisingly, I find that migrant pupils and those who are recipients of free meals hold more positive attitudes to the police in school than their counterparts. I find that young people's opinions of the police are more strongly linked to school police officers' performance than fair treatment. While this is a case study, it has implications for theory, practice and policy beyond Hackney, specifically relating to police legitimacy and policing ethnic minorities and young people in ethnically diverse locales.

abstract: Research on Tyler’s process-based model has found strong empirical support. The premise of this model is that legitimacy and legal cynicism mediate the relationship between procedural justice and compliance behaviors. Procedural justice and legitimacy in particular have been linked to compliance and cooperation and a small, but growing body of literature has examined how these factors relate to criminal offending. There remains a number of unanswered questions surrounding the developmental processes and underlying mechanisms of procedural justice and legal socialization. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study will build upon recent trends in the literature to examine what factors influence changes in perceptions of procedural justice and legal socialization attitudes over time. In order to do so, the effects of a number of time-stable and time-varying covariates will be assessed. Second, this study will evaluate the effects of four possible mediating measures—legitimacy, legal cynicism, anger, and prosocial motivation—underlying the relationship between procedural justice and criminal offending. This section of the study will use a multilevel mediation method to assess whether mediation occurs between or within the individual. Data from the Pathways to Desistance Study—a longitudinal study of 1,354 adolescents adjudicated of a serious offense followed-up for seven years—are used to address this research agenda. Results from this study offer three general conclusions. First, results show that perceptions of procedural justice are malleable, that is, they can change over time and are influenced by a number of factors. Legal socialization beliefs, however, demonstrate only marginal change over time, suggesting these beliefs to be more stable. Second, analyses indicate differing pathways and effects for direct and vicarious experiences of procedural justice. Finally, the multilevel mediation analyses reveal that within-individual changes in direct experiences of procedural justice remains a robust predictor of offending, regardless of the presence of mediating variables. Legitimacy was found to have the strongest mediation effect on between-individual differences in direct procedural justice, whereas anger partially mediated the effects of between-individual differences in vicarious procedural justice. This study concludes with a discussion of policy implications and avenues for future research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2016

Lithuania gained independence fifteen years ago. But still the understanding of human rights (as rights of citizens) and responsibilities among young people is interpreted in a wrong way. This wrong perception impedes the development of democracy at the civic society. A special attention should be paid to a person, like a full-fledged member of society. Due to this reason, legal education should be one of the main aims of civic society. In this work the features of youth legal education are explored by analyzing the conceptions of youth legal socialization and legal education.

Instauré en 1991, le droit à la privatisation gratuite de son logement a favorisé l'accession des anciens locataires soviétiques au statut de propriétaire, transformant du même coup les immeubles collectifs en copropriétés. Sur la base d'une enquête ethnographique, cette thèse étudie la mise en œuvre du nouveau Code du logement (2005) à Moscou, qui réorganise la gestion publique de l'habitat collectif autour de l'assemblée générale des copropriétaires. Contribution à l'analyse du changement social postcommuniste, cette recherche examine comment la copropriété passe du statut de texte abstrait au statut de pratiques sociales situées. Combinant les apports de la sociologie de l'État, de la sociologie des mobilisations et de l'étude des rapports ordinaires au droit, ce travail se focalise sur trois groupes d'acteurs : les agents subalternes de l'administration de Moscou ayant recours à des pratiques illégales pour mettre en œuvre localement la nouvelle législation ; des acteurs politiques tournés vers la vulgarisation et le conseil juridique dans la perspective de défendre les droits des habitants et, enfin, certains habitants particulièrement engagés dans les affaires de leur immeuble. En s'appuyant sur une approche wébérienne des usages sociaux du droit, cette recherche montre que infractions légales, batailles d'interprétation de la législation, ainsi qu'appropriations profanes du droit sont autant de mécanismes à travers lesquels le régime copropriétaire acquiert une véritable existence sociale. L'analyse de ces rapports et concurrences donne à voir la fabrique de nouvelles pratiques habitantes et subjectivités postcommunistes, reconfigurant les rapports ordinaires à l'État et au marché. / Introduced in 1991, the right to free privatization of own’s own housing favored a double transformation: of tenants into owners, and of collective housing into condominium buildings. Based on an ethnographic investigation in Moscow, this dissertation examines the implementation of the new Housing Code (2005). This legal shift led to a renewed governance of collective housing, now centered around the general meeting of owners. A contribution to post-communist social change, this research is also an investigation into the sociology of law. Based on a Weberian approach to the social practices of the law, it examines how the legal regime of joint ownership went from being abstract text to the status of social practices located. Drawing upon the sociology of the State, the study of mobilizations and researches on legal consciousness, the dissertations focuses on three groups of actors central to the construction of the new legal system. The first one consist of the lower-level agents of the Moscow administration, who resort to illegal practices in an attempt to locally implement the new legislation. The second includes local politicians, geared towards the dissemination of legal knowledge and literacy in an attempt to defend the rights of the inhabitants. The third one encompasses inhabitants particularly involved in the organization of their buildings’ administration. The dissertation focuses on three mechanisms through which the new legal system came into being: legal offenses, controversies around the interpretation of the legislation, and layperson’s appropriation of the law. The analysis sheds lights onto the making of these new was of inhabiting the space, as well as on the crafting of postcommunist subjectivities that reconfigure the relationships between the State and the market.