The Usual, Racialized, Suspects: The Consequence of Police Contacts with Black and White Youth on Adult Arrest

Research on race and policing indicates that Black Americans experience a greater frequency of police contacts, discretionary stops, and police harassment when stops occur. Yet, studies examining the long-term consequences of police contact with young people have not examined whether criminal justice consequences of police contact differ by race. We address this issue by examining whether police encounters with children and adolescents predict arrest in young adulthood and if these effects are the same for Black and White individuals. The paper uses longitudinal survey data from 331 Black and White respondents enrolled in the Seattle Public School District as eighth graders in 2001 and 2002. Our findings indicate that police encounters in childhood increase the risk of arrest in young adulthood for Black but not White respondents. Black respondents who experience contact with the police by the eighth grade have eleven times greater odds of being arrested when they are 20 years old than their White counterparts.

Police contacts, arrests and decreasing self-control and personal responsibility among female adolescents

BACKGROUND

Female involvement in the juvenile justice system (JJS) has increased rapidly in recent years. Although deficits in self-control and responsibility are associated with delinquency and higher rates of police contacts and arrests, much of this research has focused on males and/or selected samples of youth who already have a history of JJS involvement. Furthermore, little is known about the extent to which police contacts and arrests may disrupt normative psychosocial maturation.

METHODS

Police contacts, arrests, levels of self-control and personal responsibility were assessed annually between 12 and 17 years in a population-based sample of 2,450 adolescent females. Fixed-effects regression models, which control for stable individual characteristics, were used to examine whether within-adolescent changes in self-control, and responsibility were associated concurrently and prospectively with police contacts and arrests, and vice versa.

RESULTS

Across adolescence, 5%-12% participants reported police contacts and 1%-4% were arrested. After adjusting for covariates, within-person increases in self-control and responsibility were associated concurrently with decreased odds of police contact. Increasing responsibility also predicted lower likelihood of police contact in the following year. When testing reverse causation, results showed that police contact predicted next year decreases in personal responsibility, and that being arrested predicted decreasing levels of self-control and responsibility in the following year.

CONCLUSIONS

The study shows more clearly than previous work that increasing levels of responsibility precede decreased police contact in nonselected adolescent females, and that contacts with the justice system during adolescence may delay or undermine normative psychosocial maturation, highlighting important targets for intervention.

Racial Disparities in Early Criminal Justice Involvement

Criminologists have long reported the existence of racial disparity in the criminal justice system, but the important question is why. While some argue that observed differences are a consequence of more criminal behavior among minorities, the weight of the evidence indicates that this is but a partial explanation. In this paper we study data from a sample of juveniles to examine how racial differences in early police contact, and important social environments-family, school, and neighborhoods-affect later contact and arrests, controlling for self-reported delinquency. We find that early (in middle school) contact with police is an important predictor of later (high school) arrests. Also we found that, in addition to being male and living in a low-income family, children who have parents who have a history of arrest, who have experienced school disciplinary actions, who have delinquent peers, and who are in networks with deviant adults are more likely to have problems with law enforcement. These factors help to explain racial differences in police contacts and arrests.