Parental Criminal Justice Contact and Child Safety

• In Event: Criminal Legal System and Other Societal Institutions: Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Every year, millions of Americans experience contact with the criminal justice system. While these high rates of contact are often justified in the name of public safety, no existing research has examined how parental system contact impacts the safety of their children. This study uses Wisconsin’s unique linked administrative data infrastructure and Stacked Difference-in-Differences methods to estimate temporal changes in child injury and emergency room utilization around the onset of parental system contact. We find a sharp and substantively large increase in documented injuries during the initial month of a parent’s system contact followed by a rapid return to baseline, while a more moderate spike in ER utilization during the initial month of contact is followed by a significant and sustained decline in utilization over the subsequent year. Heterogeneity tests suggest that cases involving infants, system-involved mothers, or domestic violence are the most consequential. These results amplify the stakes of analyzing mass incarceration’s shadow in the US, indicating that parental criminal justice contact constitutes a measurable child safety event characterized by acute short-term harm and longer-term changes in institutional engagement that are socially patterned.

Authors

• Garrett Baker, Duke University

• Christopher Wildeman, Duke University

• Sarah Font, Washington University in St. Louis