Incarceration and Off-Time Development during and after "Youth"

• In Event: New Research on Criminal and Life Course Transitions

Abstract

Young inmates often reenter the community at the same time that most of their peers are completing the major developmental tasks of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. This means that common benchmarks for adult inmates' post-release adjustment (e.g., full-time employment, marriage) may not be as useful for gauging young inmates' post-release adjustment. This study compared young former inmates' attainment and self-sufficiency against age-normed school, work, and family benchmarks both during and after the pre-age-25 period of "youth," which recent works suggest is distinct from later young adulthood. Analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health indicate that relative to never-incarcerated youth, previously incarcerated youth received less financial support from parents in their late teens and early twenties but more financial and housing support from their mid-twenties onward. This was largely explained by age-varying and accumulating associations between incarceration and interruptions in schooling, poor labor market prospects, and lowered marriage rates.

Authors

• Sonja Siennick, Florida State University

• Alex Widdowson, Florida State University