Poster #71 - Not All Status Offenses Are Equal: Offense Type and Employment Outcomes Among Justice-Involved Youth

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

Background. Status offenses are non-criminal acts that are only illegal due to the offender's age. Despite committing no crime, youth processed through the justice system for status offenses (i.e., truancy, ungovernable behavior, and running away) may face lasting consequences for adult employment. Prior research establishes that justice system involvement harms adult labor market outcomes for delinquent youth, yet status offenders remain largely absent from this literature. Critically, when studied, status offenders are treated as a homogeneous group, a significant oversight given that each type of status offense reflects fundamentally different behavioral profiles, family contexts, and system responses. 

Purpose. Drawing on labeling theory, cumulative disadvantage, and human capital perspectives, this study makes two contributions. First, we assess whether adult employment outcomes vary by offense type among youth whose justice histories consist solely of status offenses. Second, we examine whether justice system involvement mediates this relationship, hypothesizing that youth who experience custodial placement or extended supervision face greater labor market disadvantage than those with less intensive system contact. 

Methods. We analyze administrative data from Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice linked to Unemployment Insurance records for 4,489 youth whose justice system involvement was limited to status offenses. Employment is measured as labor market attachment between ages 27 and 28 using quarterly wage records across eight quarters, a developmental period when employment patterns typically stabilize. We employ causal mediation analysis using logistic regression. The treatment variable is the most serious status offense type (truancy (30.3%), ungovernable (61.7%), or runaway (8.0%)), with truancy as the reference category. We examine two mediators separately: custodial placement (34.0%) and extended supervision, defined as duration above the 75th percentile (1.91 years). Standard errors are clustered at the parish of origin to account for within-parish correlation in labor market conditions and juvenile justice processing. 

Findings. Runaway youth exhibit a significantly lower probability of stable employment in adulthood compared to truant youth (Total Effect=-0.090, p=0.006). Contrary to the hypothesized mediation pathway, this disadvantage is driven entirely by direct effects (Natural Direct Effect=-0.087, p=0.010), as neither custodial placement nor extended supervision mediates the relationship (Natural Indirect Effect=-0.003, p=0.48). These findings suggest that the observed employment gap for runaway youth is not explained by differences in justice system responses. For ungovernable youth, a marginally significant employment gap emerges in some specifications (Total Effect=-0.030, p=0.06), though it is not robust across models, and no evidence of mediation is detected. Sensitivity analyses using ungovernable youth as the reference category further indicate that runaway youth experience a consistent and substantively larger employment disadvantage relative to both comparison groups.  

Implications. Employment disadvantage among status offenders is offense-type specific and driven by upstream conditions associated with running away, including family instability, trauma, and housing insecurity, rather than by the justice system's custodial or supervisory response. These findings carry direct policy relevance. Reducing custody placements or shortening supervision duration alone will not close the employment gap for runaway youth. Effective intervention requires identifying and addressing family instability and trauma at the point of system entry.

Author

• Alejandra Leyton, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
  Presenting Author