Relationships of Legal Reasoning to Social Class,Closeness to Parents,and Exposure to a High Level of Reasoning among Adolescents Varying in Seriousness of Delinquency

Abstract

The present research examined the relationships of legal reasoning to social class, closeness to parents, and exposure to a high level of reasoning by a group of adolescents varying in seriousness of delinquency. Subjects were 266 white males, aged 14 to 16 yr., each of whom had been arrested for a minor offense but who ranged from infrequent to repeated offenders. They were randomly assigned to one of two court programs ½ to 1 hr. long. After participation, approximately equal numbers in the program which gave exposure to a high level of legal reasoning (n = 98) and the one that did not (n = 103) agreed to a voluntary interview. Participants in the two programs did not differ in their post-program reasoning level on Tapp and Levine's scale, even though one group had been exposed to much reasoning. Social class (Hollingshead's Two-factor Index) was positively but weakly related to reasoning level but not to closeness to parents (Hirschi scale). The findings contradict the use of legal socialization theory as a basis for short court programs or to explain the more serious, repeated delinquency of youths of the lower class and without closeness to parents.