Dry the Rain

thedailywhat:

The Kids Are All In Jail of the Day: According to a study published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Pediatrics, just under a third of all American citizens will be arrested before the age of 23.

When a similar study, published nearly half a century ago by criminologist Ron Christensen, claimed that 22% of Americans under 23 would be arrested, the result shocked the country.

The latest study, compiled by University of North Carolina-Charlotte criminologist Robert Brame and his team using over a decade’s worth of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, suggests that number may have increased by as much as 8.2% over the past 44 years.

“There’s a lot more arresting going on now,” said Carnegie Mellon criminologist Alfred Blumstein, who was a member of President Lyndon Johnson’s crime task force alongside Christensen. Blumstein pointed out that drugs and domestic violence — crimes that would not have been a priority for police in the 60s — account for some of the increase in arrests.

Criminologist Megan Kurlychek also noted that most smaller offenses were handled informally by local authorities 40 years ago. “Society is a lot less tolerant of these teenage behaviors,” she said, emphasizing that “arrests have worse consequences than ever for these juveniles.”

“[Arrest records] follow you forever,” Kurlychek said. “The average teenager who steals an iPod or is arrested for possession of marijuana — why do we make that define their lives?” 

[usatoday.]

The actual paper is here, by the way. It doesn’t include a breakdown of results by race, which is odd considering the disparity that is most likely operating there. (I wonder if they’re saving that for a future paper, since the only demographic they really broke down here was age - sometimes they save some results for later.)