Early life patterns of criminal legal system involvement: Inequalities by race/ethnicity, gender, and parental education.

BACKGROUND: Contacts with the criminal legal system have consequences for a host of outcomes. Still, early life age patterns of system involvement remain to be better understood. OBJECTIVE: We estimate cumulative risks of arrest, probation, and incarceration from childhood through early adulthood and assess disparities by race/ethnicity, gender, and parental education. METHODS: Data come from the Transition to Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (n = 2,736). We use Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression models to estimate cumulative risks of arrest, probation, and incarceration across the early life course and document disparities by race/ethnicity, gender, and parental education, as well as at their intersections. RESULTS: Criminal legal system involvement is common among recent cohorts, but Black and Latinx boys and young men face especially high risks. Among Black men whose highest-educated parent completed high school or less, an estimated six in ten had been arrested, four in ten had experienced probation, and four in ten had been incarcerated by age 26. Among Latinx men whose highest-educated parent completed high school or less, an estimated four in ten had been arrested and one in four had been incarcerated by age 26. Black women also experienced high risks, with an estimated one in four arrested by age 26. CONTRIBUTION: We document early life patterns of criminal legal system involvement among young people who came of age during the expansion of proactive policing and mass incarceration in the United States, providing important context for understanding the role of the system in generating and exacerbating life course inequalities.

Disability Is Not a Burden: The Relationship between Early Childhood Disability and Maternal Health Depends on Family Socioeconomic Status.

Narratives rooted in ableism portray disabled children as burdens on their families. Prior research highlights health disparities between mothers of disabled children and mothers of nondisabled children, but little is known about how socio-structural contexts shape these inequities. Using longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 2,338), this study assesses whether the relationship between early childhood disability and maternal health varies by household socioeconomic status (SES). Findings reveal that, on average, mothers of children disabled by age five report worse health than mothers of nondisabled children; however, this pattern is only evident among lower SES mothers and disappears for higher SES mothers. Contextualizing the findings within the systemic ableism literature highlights how-instead of portraying disabled children as burdens on their families-scholars and policymakers should focus on how ableism and poverty burden disabled people and their families in ways that pattern health risks.

The Links Between Disability, Incarceration, And Social Exclusion.

Disabled people are disproportionately incarcerated and segregated from society through a variety of institutions. Still, the links between disability and incarceration are underexplored, limiting understanding of how carceral institutions punish and contribute to the social exclusion of disabled people. Using data from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, we estimated disability prevalence in state and federal prisons, assessing disparities by race, ethnicity, and sex, and we examined inequities in previous residence in other "punitive" and "therapeutic" institutions. Sixty-six percent of incarcerated people self-reported a disability, with Black, Hispanic, and multiracial disabled men especially overrepresented in prisons. Compared with nondisabled incarcerated people, disabled incarcerated people were more likely to have previously resided in other institutions, such as juvenile detention facilities and psychiatric hospitals. Together, our findings advance the understanding of disability in carceral institutions, highlighting the need for policy interventions redressing the mechanisms contributing to the high incarceration risks of disabled people and the disabling nature of prisons and other carceral institutions.