Many in U.S. Are Arrested by Age 23, Study Finds

By ERICA GOODE

Published: December 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/us/nearly-a-third-of-americans-are-arrested-by-23-study-says.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

By age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested
for a crime, according to a new study that researchers say
is a measure of growing exposure to the criminal justice
system in everyday life.

The study, the first since the 1960s to look at the arrest
histories of a national sample of adolescents and young
adults over time, found that 30.2 percent of the
23-year-olds who participated reported having been
arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic
violation.

That figure is significantly higher than the 22 percent
found in a 1965 study that examined the same issue using
different methods. The increase may be a reflection of the
justice system becoming more punitive and more aggressive
in its reach during the last half-century, the researchers
said. Arrests for drug-related offenses, for example, have
become far more common, as have zero-tolerance policies in
schools.

The study did not look at racial or regional differences,
but other research has found higher arrest rates for black
men and for youths living in poor urban areas.

Criminal justice experts said the 30.2 percent figure was
especially notable at a time when employers, aided by the
Internet, routinely conduct criminal background checks on
job candidates.

"This estimate provides a real sense that the proportion
of people who have criminal history records is sizable and
perhaps much larger than most people would expect," said
Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the State University at
Albany and a co-author of the study, which appears in
Monday's issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The study analyzed data collected as part of the federal
government's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The
7,335 participants were nationally representative and
ranged in age from 12 to 16 when they were enrolled in the
survey in 1996. The first interviews were conducted in
1997. Follow-up interviews have been carried out annually
since then.

The researchers found that the probability of a first
arrest accelerated in late adolescence and early adulthood
-- at 18, 15.9 percent of the participants reported having
been arrested -- and then began to flatten out as the
youths entered their 20s.

Robert Brame, a professor of criminal justice and
criminology at the University of North Carolina,
Charlotte, and the lead author of the study, said he hoped
the research would alert physicians to signs that their
young patients were at risk.

"We know that arrest occurs in a context," Dr. Brame said.
"There are other things going on in people's lives at the
time they get arrested, and those things aren't
necessarily good."

If doctors can intervene, he added, "It can have big
implications for what happens to these kids after the
arrest, whether they become embedded in the criminal
justice system or whether they shrug it off and move on."

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate