RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts
JF RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
FD Russell Sage Foundation
SP 89
OP 123
DO 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.1.05
VO 5
IS 1
A1 Vesla M. Weaver
A1 Andrew Papachristos
A1 Michael Zanger-Tishler
YR 2019
UL http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/5/1/89.abstract
AB Our study explores the arrest experiences of two generational cohorts—those entering adulthood on either side of a large shift in American policing. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 and 1997), we find a stark increase in arrest odds among the later generation at every level of offending, suggesting a decoupling between contact with the justice system and criminal conduct. Furthermore, this decoupling became racially inflected. Blacks had a much higher probability of arrest at the start of the twenty-first century than both blacks of the generation prior and whites of the same generation. The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime.