The structure of adolescents' attitudes towards law and crime

The study was designed to examine the factorial composition of adolescents' attitudes towards law and crime. A questionnaire was administered to 380 male and female high school students of mixed SES and ethnic background. Factor analysis of responses to 36 items concerning law and crime-related issues yielded 12 factors of which seven were interpreted. The interpreted factors (and the number of items comprising each) were as follows: retributive responses to criminals (9 items), self-attribution of social-legal responsibility (6 items), belief in effective vs ineffective law-enforcement (4 items), law abidance (3 items), government by authority vs government by law (2 items), shared responsibility for law and order (2 items), and adverse, exploitative orientation to the law (2 items). These factors were judged to reflect coherent relationships among adolescents' views of law and crime.