Drugs, Dorms, and Disparities: How College Contributes to Punishment Inequality

• In Event: 043 - Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Colleges, Sports, and Prisons: Social Contexts of Drug Use

Abstract

Recent trends in United States’ drug laws and law enforcement practices have inspired much research on punishment inequality and the mass incarceration of illicit drugs users. Existing studies have identified important contributing factors, such as racial discrimination and unequal access to sufficient legal counsel, but many mechanisms that could potentially contribute to punishment inequality have not been examined. Using the life-course perspective and ideas present in differential institutional engagement theory, this study examines how college enrollment and residency impact who is arrested and punished for drug charges. With data from the NLSY’97, I analyze between- and within-individual variation in drug arrests and charges using random, fixed, and hybrid effects regression. I also examine latent trajectories of drug arrests for respondents enrolled and not-enrolled in college using group-based finite mixture modeling. I find college enrollment and living in a college dormitory decrease an individual’s risk of being arrested and charged with a drug offense. Further, I find the effects of college enrollment on the probability of a drug arrest hold net of the level of illegal substance use. I conclude that campuses and dormitories protect drug using college students from punishment, and college enrollment may be an important, unexamined mechanism driving inequalities in drug arrests and incarceration.

Author

• Joshua Fink, Duke University