Arrest rates for young Americans have been rising for decades. Nearly one in four Millennials have arrest records, and, if the trend is continuing, the rate is even higher for members of Generation Z.
Once you have an arrest record, it will hurt you for life, even if you are a law-abiding citizen from then on.
Average annual incomes are $6,000 a year lower for those with records of one arrest and $11,000 a year lower for those with multiple arrests. Arrest records can bar you from certain jobs where “good moral character” is a requirement.
It’s not clear why arrests are on the increase. Serious crimes, such as homicide and robbery, are declining. As economic historian Adam Tooze commented:
But it is implausible to suggest that such a huge surge in criminalization can have been entirely to do with a greater amount of criminal behavior. And if it were it would beg the question of what was defined as criminal. A substantial surge in enforcement is clearly a contributing factor.
The surge may reflect the “broken windows” policy of policing. The idea is that lax law enforcement of minor offenses leads to disorder that encourages more serious offenses.
When Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York, he openly said that most violent crime is caused by young black men, and the way to prevent crime was for police to harass young black men in line.
But although blacks are arrested more frequently on average than whites, arrest rates are going up for both blacks and whites. Whatever the reason, it’s not just racism.
The biggest difference in arrest rates is between those who have college educations or. have parents with college educations, and those who don’t. Of course cause and effect can work both ways. An arrest record can affect your chances of getting into college.
Tooze concluded:
Mass incarceration is the most dramatic and most spectacularly damaging aspect of the criminalization of American society, but the damage done is far more all-pervasive than even the extraordinary figures for the American prison population would suggest.
According to the FBI, somewhere in excess of 77 million Americans have what the FBI deems to be a “criminal record,” approximately a quarter of the total population. More Americans are recorded in the FBI’s criminal database than have college degrees.
America’s policing and criminal justice systems are a gigantic apparatus for the destruction of human capital and life chances that damages above all minorities and America’s working class.
What do you think?
LINKS
Barred from employment: How criminalization blights American lives by Adam Tooze for Chartbook #173.
Younger Americans Much More Likely to Have Been Arrested Than Previous Generations; Increase Is Largest Among Whites and Women by the RAND Corporation.
Where Millennials End and Generation Z Begins by Pew Research Center.