Racial disparities in employment following adjudication for a serious offense

ABSTRACT Prior research has highlighted persistent racial/ethnic disparities in employment and workforce engagement. That said, this research has yet to be extended to justice-involved youth. This is problematic, given that this is a population that may already face barriers to employment and certain racial/ethnic minority groups may then face additional barriers. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining whether or not racial/ethnic disparities in employment exist among justice-involved youth and whether these disparities vary across time since adjudication. The first seven waves of the Pathways to Desistance study were analyzed. Mixed effects modeling was used to examine whether or not racial/ethnic disparities in odds of past-year employment existed among justice-involved youth and whether these disparities were stable or variant across time. Results indicated that Black justice-involved youth reported lower odds of past-year employment compared to White and Latinx justice-involved youth. These disparities were also found to be stable across time. These results indicate that Black justice-involved youth should be a priority population for targeting with programming to improve employment prospects. Mentoring and skills development programs may be helpful in this regard.