The Great Leveler? Juvenile Arrest, College Attainment, and the Future of American Inequality

• In Event: New from PHDCN+: Long-term Consequences of Early Life Contexts and Criminal Legal Contact for Adult Well-Being

Abstract

A burgeoning literature suggests that criminal justice contact in adolescence hinders educational attainment, but prior research primarily considers short-term outcomes such as dropping out of high school and is often limited to self-reported arrest information plagued by various limitations. In this paper, we leverage a unique longitudinal dataset—Illinois administrative criminal records linked to 25 years of survey data—that enables us to provide the first estimates of whether the effect of an officially recorded juvenile arrest lingers beyond high school through college completion. We find that juvenile arrest is associated with a 20-25 percentage point decrease in one’s likelihood of graduating from a four-year college. This association persists even for those who graduate high school, is generally consistent across socio-demographic groups and birth cohorts, and does not seem to be a mere byproduct of post-contact avoidance of surveilling systems. Given the disparate and prevalent nature of juvenile arrest, the durability of the association across time periods characterized by vast social-structural changes, and the ever-increasing importance of college attainment, our study offers new insights on how entanglement with the criminal justice system prior to adulthood may contribute to contemporary and future inequality in the US.

Authors

• Garrett Baker, Duke University

• David Kirk, University of Pennsylvania

• Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University