The Effects of Juvenile Arrest on Educational Outcomes: Does Arrest Type Matter?

Mariam Ashtiani, University of California, Irvine

The majority of research up to this point that assesses the impact of juvenile criminal justice involvement on educational attainment looks primarily at aggregated general measures of arrest and incarceration that do not distinguish between arrest types. This general categorization may miss patterns and effects that exist for different types of arrest. Using longitudinal data, this article this study compares the effects of drug, violent, and property arrests on educational attainment at the transition to adulthood (high school graduation and college enrollment), and also looks at racial differences in the effects of juvenile arrests, adjudicating between labeling and propensity theories, which suggest different effects of arrest. The results indicate that juvenile drug arrest are significantly more damaging to the educational outcomes of youth, compared to other types of arrest; and this effect is more pronounced for Black and Latino youth.