The Great Leveler? Juvenile Arrest, College Attainment, and the Future of American Inequality

Abstract

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.