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Juvenile Arrest and Collateral Educational Damage in the Transition to Adulthood.

ABSTRACT: Official sanctioning of students by the criminal justice system is a long-hypothesized source of educational disadvantage, but its explanatory status remains unresolved. Few studies of the educational consequences of a criminal record account for alternative explanations such as low self-control, lack of parental supervision, deviant peers, and neighborhood disadvantage. Moreover, virtually no research on the effect of a criminal record has examined the "black box" of mediating mechanisms or the consequence of arrest for postsecondary educational attainment. Analyzing longitudinal data with multiple and independent assessments of theoretically relevant domains, this paper estimates the direct effect of arrest on later high school dropout and college enrollment for adolescents with otherwise equivalent neighborhood, school, family, peer, and individual characteristics as well as similar frequency of criminal offending. We present evidence that arrest has a substantively large and robust impact on dropping out of high school among Chicago public school students. We also find a significant gap in four-year college enrollment between arrested and otherwise similar youth without a criminal record. We assess intervening mechanisms hypothesized to explain the process by which arrest disrupts the schooling process, and, in turn, produces collateral educational damage. The results imply that institutional responses and disruptions in students' educational trajectories, rather than social psychological factors, are responsible for the arrest-education link.

SUBMITTER: Kirk DS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4192649 | biostudies-other | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:BackgroundDespite prior studies, transitions in smoking patterns are not fully understood. Getting arrested may alter an individual's smoking pattern through processes proscribed by the criminological labeling theory. This study examined how arrest during emerging adulthood altered smoking behavior during subsequent years and whether there were differential effects by race/ethnicity and gender.MethodsWe analyzed 15 waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Multinomial logistic regressions were performed using Stata software version 14.ResultsFor both genders, arrested black men and women had the most distinct smoking transitions (both increases and decreases) as compared with their non-arrested counterparts. Among men, particularly black males, arrest in early adulthood was associated with the men transitioning to both increased and decreased smoking. Patterns in smoking transitions for women were less clear, suggesting that women's smoking may be influenced by factors not in the models. Women had a low probability of starting to smoke or increasing smoking if they were never arrested between 18 and 21 years of age.ConclusionsThe results for transitioning into increased smoking offer some support for labeling theory processes. Other findings suggest that arrest may lead to some men reducing or quitting smoking. Early adulthood arrest may serve to "shock the system" and contribute to males altering their prior smoking behavior.ImplicationsTobacco use over the life course, particularly across different racial and ethnic groups, remains understudied. This study contributes to the literature using a nationally representative sample to examine the effect of getting arrested in emerging adulthood on cigarette use during subsequent years. In conducting the study, investigators combined theories and methodological approaches from 2 complementary disciplines: public health and criminal justice. Because criminal justice policymakers tend to focus on issues like ex-offender unemployment, public health officials can provide guidance regarding the effect of justice system involvement on smoking, particularly given the adverse health outcomes of using cigarettes.

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Juvenile Arrest and Collateral Educational Damage in the Transition to Adulthood.

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