Criminal Justice Contact on Reported Level of Life Satisfaction Across Race/Ethnicity

• In Event: The Intersection of Race, Ethnicity, and Sex: A Biopsychosocial Approach

Abstract

Scholarship on crime, health, and wellbeing continues to reach new heights. While this complex interrelationship relies heavily on a multidisciplinary and intersectional approach, we’ve yet to consider life satisfaction in a systematic way. Life satisfaction, a component of subjective wellbeing aims to address self-reported evaluations of an individual’s quality of life. Despite its strong association with factors relevant and heavily explored within a criminological framework, little is known about the implications of criminal justice contact on it, and less, about its potential differential consequences for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. The current study relies on Agnew's GST to assess criminal justice contact as a strain and negative life event for individuals’ reported level of life satisfaction across race/ethnicity. Relying on ordered logistic fixed effects, results suggest that the relationship between criminal justice contact and life satisfaction operates differently across racial/ethnic groups. Future research should continue to consider life satisfaction as a relevant factor in criminological scholarship for collateral consequences, and health and wellbeing outcomes across the life course.

Author

• Miranda Celeste, University of Cincinnati