The Great Leveler? Juvenile Arrest, College Attainment, and the Future of American Inequality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2328592 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Garrett Baker (0000-0003-4915-920X, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA, corresponding author), David S Kirk (0000-0003-0037-4291, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA), Robert J Sampson (0000-0003-4259-8146, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0407 • E-ISSN: 1939-8573 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380407251338844 |
| OpenAlex | W4411427005 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 67 |
A burgeoning literature suggests that criminal justice contact in adolescence hinders educational attainment, but prior research primarily considers short-term outcomes and relies on self-reported arrest information. In this article, we leverage Illinois administrative records over 25 years linked to a multicohort longitudinal study to provide estimates of whether an officially recorded juvenile arrest lingers beyond high school through college completion. We find that juvenile arrest is associated with a 20 to 30 percentage-point decrease in one's likelihood of graduating from a four-year college. This association persists for college enrollees and is consistent across sociodemographic groups and birth cohorts. Given the unequal and prevalent nature of juvenile arrest, the association's durability across time periods characterized by vast social-structural changes, and the potentially unique vulnerabilities of system-involved students on college campuses, our study offers new insights on how official legal entanglement prior to adulthood may contribute to inequality in the United States
Criminal justice · Criminology · Demographic economics · Economics · Educational attainment · Inequality · Juvenile · Juvenile court · Juvenile delinquency · Leverage (statistics) · Political science · Socioeconomic status · Sociology · Status attainment · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Demography · Education Discipline and Inequality · Law · Psychology
Broke
The Privileged Poor
The Schooled Society
Proactive Policing
Covariate Balancing Propensity Score
Who Will Graduate? Disruption of High School Education by Arrest and Court Involvement
Demographic Patterns of Cumulative Arrest Prevalence by Ages 18 and 23
Examining the Divergence Across Self-report and Official Data Sources on Inferences About the Adolescent Life-course of Crime
Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior
A Caution Regarding Rules of Thumb for Variance Inflation Factors
Does Aid Matter? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Grant Aid on College Student Outcomes
Class Dismissed
A Life-Course Theory of Cumulative Disadvantage and the Stability of Delinquency
Ain’t No Makin’ It
Engage and Evade
Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime
Crime in the Making
Crime and the Community
Outsiders
Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States
What Money Doesn't Buy
Going Greek
Same major, same economic returns? College selectivity and earnings inequality in young adulthood
Criminal justice involvement and high school completion
Does federal financial aid affect college enrollment? Evidence from drug offenders and the Higher Education Act of 1998
Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban Men
What Can Police Do to Reduce Crime, Disorder, and Fear
The problem with criminal records
Labeling, Life Chances, and Adult Crime
Support seeking, system avoidance, and citizenship
System management and compensatory parenting
Criminal records and college admissions
School punishment and interpersonal exclusion
Labeling Effects of First Juvenile Arrests
The Implications of Arrest for College Enrollment
The Edge of Stigma
What People Want
Surveys, Records, and the Study of Incarceration in Families
Paying for the Party
The Educational and Early Occupational Attainment Process
Beyond Incarceration
Surveillance and System Avoidance
Equalization or Selection? Reassessing the "Meritocratic Power" of a College Degree in Intergenerational Income Mobility
Who Benefits Most from College
Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority Youth
Optimism and Obstacles
Adding Insult to Injury
Juvenile Arrest and Collateral Educational Damage in the Transition to Adulthood
Another Way Out
Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States
Examining the Black Gender Gap in Educational Attainment
What Makes a Quality College? Reexamining the Equalizing Potential of Higher Education in the United States
The Birth Lottery of History
Imprisonment and Labor Market Outcomes
Is a College Degree Still the Great Equalizer? Intergenerational Mobility across Levels of Schooling in the United States
More Universalism, Less Structural Mobility
Status, Autonomy, and Training in Occupational Mobility
Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies
School suspension and social selection
College as equalizer? Testing the selectivity hypothesis
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |