Generational Consequences: Criminal Legal Contact and College Attendance across Birth Cohorts

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Crime and Punishment

Abstract

Recent work reveals that birth-cohort membership is an important determinant of criminal legal contact. Findings suggest young adults in the early 2000s were substantially more likely to experience arrest and incarceration compared to peers with identical sociodemographic and crime participation backgrounds born at other times. Using national representative survey data from 1980 (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979) and 2001 (National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health ) I extend this work by investigating the difference in collateral consequences across birth cohorts. I first describe the probability of police stops, arrests, and convictions for each cohort. Findings suggest contact was more likely in 2001 compared to 1980 but that the difference is smaller for police stops compared to arrests and convictions. Then, using propensity score matching, I estimate the impact of criminal legal contact on college attendance. I find that all forms of contact are associated with lower college attendance in 1980, but that lower-level contact (police stops and arrests) are unassociated with college attendance by 2001. My findings push forward literature on cohort differences in criminal legal contact by providing evidence that downstream consequences vary between cohorts. This suggests that cohort membership is a potential determinant of collateral consequences.

Author

• Max I. Lisch, The University of Texas at Austin