Mental Health Consequences of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Policing Among Adolescents in the United States and the United Kingdom

The ability to generalize findings across different contexts is valued among many social scientists. However, many social scientists grapple with the external validity of their own and others’ results. Most research on policing among adolescents has come from a single Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) nation: the United States.

Jackson et al. (p. 1885) provide a valuable contribution to the literature as they examine disparities in police stops and the mental health consequences of such stops among adolescents in the Millennium Cohort Study, a nationally representative birth cohort study of children in the United Kingdom, another WEIRD nation. Ultimately, the authors found that adolescents in the United Kingdom who were ever stopped and questioned by the police at age 14 years reported higher rates of self-harm and significantly higher odds of attempted suicide at age 17 years than did their peers who had never been stopped, and mental distress at age 14 years mediated the longitudinal link between police stops at age 14 years and self-harm and attempted suicide at age 17 years.

The documented findings of Jackson et al. remained significant after the authors controlled for a series of relevant covariates, including youths’ age, sex, race, delinquency, and self-esteem. That is, potential alternative hypotheses (e.g., whether youths with poor self-esteem were driving the observed effects) were ruled out.

The findings of Jackson et al. reflect many patterns found in US-based samples. US-based studies have found that adolescents who were stopped by the police, including stopped and frisked, also reported poorer mental health, including higher depression and anxiety, cross-sectionally¹ and longitudinally.² Many of these studies were conducted on adolescent samples that predominantly identified as African American and Latino. In fact, although the sample of youths in the Millennium Cohort Study was predominantly White, Jackson et al. continued to find racial/ethnic disparities in rates of police stops. Specifically, youths who identified as other and mixed race were more likely than were their White peers to experience police stops. Although the effects of a police stop on self-harm and attempted suicide did not vary across racial/ethnic groups, racial/ethnic disparities in policing may concentrate these negative effects among particular racial/ethnic groups when such groups are disproportionately exposed to a police stop.

These racial/ethnic disparities should be surprising in WEIRD nations, considering that the ideals of education and democracy are shared between the United States and the United Kingdom. Yet, biases and stereotypes permeate these societies and threaten these ideals. For instance, social psychologists have found that individuals view Black American boys as less innocent, more threatening, and older than their White American peers.^3,4 Although adolescence is characterized as a period of heightened risk-taking behaviors,⁵ these behaviors, like delinquency, have not solely accounted for racial/ethnic disparities in negative police stop experiences between Black and White American youths.⁶ Although studies examining the role of racial/ethnic biases in shaping Black–White disparities in policing have been largely conducted in the United States, possible directions for future research would be to use experimental methods to understand how biases and stereotypes shape observed racial/ethnic disparities in policing between racial/ethnic minority youths and their White peers in the United Kingdom.⁷

In addition to documenting racial/ethnic disparities, Jackson et al. found that police stop encounters at age 14 years predicted greater self-harm and attempted suicide at age 17 years. Specifically, youths who were stopped at any point before age 14 years reported greater rates of self-harm and higher odds of attempted suicide at age 17 years. Although the authors could not test the temporal ordering between their key constructs, it is notable that youths self-reported police stops three years before the outcomes, reducing the likelihood that their outcomes preceded the police stop encounters. Substantively, these findings shed light on the consequences of youths’ possible negative encounters with the police. Indeed, even in the absence of delinquent behaviors, law enforcement has been found to stop, question, and frisk many youths, particularly youths of color.⁸ In turn, many youths feel unfairly targeted, and their police stop encounters have been found to include racial/ethnic epithets.⁶ These experiences threaten youths’ sense of safety, as police officers are in a position of power and have been found to threaten and use unwarranted lethal force against children and adults of color.^6,9

Jackson et al. also found that mental distress helped mediate the longitudinal link between police stop encounters at age 14 years and self-harm and attempted suicide at age 17 years. Specifically, youths who were stopped at any point before age 14 years reported greater mental distress contemporaneously, which in turn predicted greater rates of self-harm and higher odds of attempted suicide at age 17 years. With this mediation analysis focusing on mental distress, Jackson et al. provide a psychological mechanism that can be used to guide interventionists and community leaders with directions on how to intervene and reduce the harmful effects of police stops. Without these interventions, unfortunately, policing as a governmental institution can have serious consequences on how youths relate with and view their governments.^10,11 Youths with negative police encounters may develop increased cynicism toward the law¹¹ and engage in greater avoidant behaviors toward other government institutions keeping formal records (e.g., schools, hospitals),¹⁰ further compromising the ideals of WEIRD countries. Thus, tackling policing as an institution and its relationship with young citizens may be necessary for government leaders as they work to sustain equitable and democratic societies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond.