For Black youth, an encounter with police by eighth grade predicts they will be arrested by young adulthood 鈥� but the same is not true for white youth, a new 天美影视传媒 study finds.

Black young adults are 11 times more likely to be arrested by age 20 if they had an initial encounter with law enforcement in their early teens than Black youth who don鈥檛 have that first contact.

In contrast, white young adults with early police contact are not significantly more likely to be arrested later, compared with white peers without that history.

The study鈥檚 authors found that Black youth are more likely than white youth to be treated as 鈥渦sual suspects鈥� after a first encounter with police, leading to subsequent arrests over time. Even as white young adults report engaging in significantly more illegal behavior, Black young adults face more criminal penalties, the study finds.

Researchers also said it鈥檚 not just the number of stops, but what transpires during a police stop that sets the tone for future interactions with police.

鈥淲hat we know about police contacts and youth generally is that Black youth are more likely to be stopped by police to begin with, and are more likely to have a negative experience when that happens,鈥� said first author , a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University who led the study while pursuing her doctorate at the UW. 鈥淲hat we haven鈥檛 known previously is the long-term effects of police contacts in terms of criminal justice outcomes.鈥�

McGlynn-Wright added that the , published Oct. 31 in the journal Social Problems, shows these early contacts with police create a 鈥渟ystem response鈥� to Black youth not experienced by white youth.

in who is stopped, why and for what penalty have been well documented, the researchers said. Also, police stops have been to individuals鈥� later run-ins with law enforcement.

For this study, UW researchers wanted to examine the effects of the first stop on the lives of Black and white adolescents, and whether a stop in the early teen years is associated with 鈥渟econdary sanctioning,鈥� or a 鈥渦sual suspects鈥� treatment by police that plays out over future stops and/or arrests. The study is among the first to explore the racial differences in police contact over time.

Using longitudinal data from more than 300 Seattle young adults, researchers found stark differences in the law enforcement trajectory of adolescents based on race, from the numbers of Black and white youth who encounter police by middle school, to the numbers arrested in high school and beyond.

It also comes during a period of significant reckoning over race and policing in the United States, after a series of law enforcement killings of Black people around the country. As communities grapple with how to address institutionalized racism, police procedures and accountability, many school districts, , have ended their contracts with law enforcement agencies for school resource officers, the personnel who are assigned to specific school buildings. Research has shown that by school resource officers.

The UW study launched nearly 20 years ago, with students at 18 Seattle schools. Nearly half of the 331 students were Black. Researchers surveyed students and parents, then followed up with participants in 10^th grade and at age 20 to learn more about behavior and consequences. Full data are available on 261 participants.

Differences were clear early on. While there were no differences in self-reported illegal behavior between Black and white youth at 8^th grade, 37% of Black teens said they had had some sort of contact with police, compared to 22% of white eighth-graders.

Researchers examined two trends at age 20: whether study participants had been arrested in the past year and whether they had engaged in any illegal activity, from violent crime to drug use to other criminal behavior, such as drawing graffiti, stealing from a store or breaking into private property. The idea, researchers said, was to determine not only who was being arrested, but also who was not.

Significantly more white participants reported engaging in some level of criminal behavior: 53% of white young adults, compared to 32% of Black young adults. But at age 20, Black youth were more than twice as likely to be arrested as white youth (15% compared to 6%). When the eighth-grade police contact is taken into account, it shows that early police contact for Black youth was uniquely predictive of being arrested by age 20, but not for white youth.

Simply put, Black respondents experiencing police contact by eighth grade have an 11 times greater chance of reporting an arrest by age 20 than Black respondents who did not experience early police contact. This was not the case for white youth.

The study was unable to explore the reasons behind these differences, but researchers said the results are clear:

鈥淲hite people are engaging in more illegal behavior, largely because of their greater drug use, and getting arrested less often at age 20 than Black people, who are committing fewer crimes and getting arrested more,鈥� said co-author , a professor in the UW School of Social Work and director of the .

Of the 261 respondents surveyed as young adults, white respondents were more likely to report illegal behavior than Black respondents (53% and 32%, respectively), primarily because they were substantially more likely than Blacks to report illegal drug use (40% and 14%, respectively).

While the data was collected in Seattle, researchers say the patterns they found are likely occurring in cities around the country 鈥� Seattle is 鈥渕ore like every other town鈥� than some larger metro areas like Chicago and Philadelphia, where many criminal justice studies are located, noted co-author , a professor emeritus of sociology at the UW.

The bulk of the UW research was conducted before the 2012 Seattle Police Department consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, whereby the department was to address an excessive use of force, Crutchfield pointed out.

Still, the indisputable differences in the experiences of Black and white youth raise a number of policy and institutional issues. The authors note that it鈥檚 not just the quantity but the quality of stops 鈥� what are often called 鈥渋nvestigatory stops鈥� of a young person that raise alarm.

鈥淲hen police interact with communities, and young people in communities, they have to be especially mindful of the nature and substance of the encounters, and police really need training to avoid negative interactions,鈥� Crutchfield said. 鈥淲hat we found is that contact matters. In this study, we couldn鈥檛 parse out the nature of the interactions, but I suspect most kids experienced the interaction in a negative way. The message is, cops need to do better to minimize unnecessary contacts, and when they do contact people, to treat them better.鈥�

The paper鈥檚 findings also may support the choice by some school districts to end the practice of deploying police officers in schools, the authors said. Given the tendency for school resource officers to get involved in school discipline 鈥� though their primary assignment is to enforce the law and keep buildings safe 鈥� it presents another situation where Black students are often treated differently than white students.

The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. , a research scientist at the UW Social Development Research Group, was a co-author.

For more information, contact McGlynn-Wright at amcglynnwright@tulane.edu, Crutchfield at crutch@uw.edu or Haggerty at haggerty@uw.edu.

In his new book, “,” 天美影视传媒 sociologist takes on the popular notion that the unemployed are more likely to commit crimes. A former juvenile probation officer and parole agent, Crutchfield explains the nuanced links between work, unemployment and crime.

Q. You write that the stratification of labor contributes significantly to a person’s lifestyle and whether or not they commit crimes. Can you explain?

A. When someone has a low-end job (what some scholars refer to as secondary sector jobs), such jobs don’t pay well, and have few or no benefits and limited prospects for the future. Young adults in that situation may feel like they don’t have to conform to society’s expectations, and are at risk of getting involved in crime because they are likely to spend time with similar young men. People with good jobs, what some scholars call primary sector jobs, by contrast have something to lose if they do not constrain their own lifestyles. So they spend less time in situations where crime might occur.聽The stratification of labor that I write about is the structuring of the labor market into primary sector (good) jobs and secondary sector (bad) jobs.

Q. Explain your contention that rejecting a so-called “slave job” 鈥� one with low wages, little future and no respect 鈥� doesn’t mean someone is unwilling to work.

A. All the evidence indicates that most people who are out of work will accept work that is offered to them. So it’s not true to say that people won’t take a “slave job” because they’re holding out for something better. People who reject a “slave job” are willing to work, but they want work that will give them a livable wage and allows them some dignity.聽That dignity comes from working hard and being reasonably and fairly compensated for that work.

Q. You say the general public unquestionably accepts the idea that a poor economy will lead to more crime, but that’s not always the case. Can you give some examples?

A. Well, during the Great Depression, some types of crime rates went up, like burglary, but others went down, like homicides.聽More recently, during the Great Recession that began in 2008, the decline in crime rates that has been going on since the 1990s has continued, even though the overall unemployment rate in the U.S. was in double digits for a time and hovered at high levels (7 to 9 percent) for several years.聽What happened during that time was that the overall crime rate declined (contrary to popular expectations), but in pockets within some cities there appears to have been less of a crime decline and in some other places, actual increases in offenses.

Q. When it comes to jobs and crime, what are the differences between urban and rural areas?

A. We know that there are far fewer employment options available in rural areas, but at this point the evidence is limited about what effect that has on crime and delinquency rates.聽And, in rural areas, without the concentration of poverty and disadvantage that exist in urban areas the negative effect of being unemployed or being in a bad job or being poor do not appear to be amplified the way it appears to be in urban disadvantaged settings.

Q. So, where do we go from here?

A. Too many of the jobs that are being created in recent years are low-end, secondary sector jobs.聽This does not bode well for the future.聽The $15 minimum wage is one promising way to improve the quality of jobs, but it raises a lot of unanswered questions. Other ways to improve the job sector for everyone includes improving benefits (paid health care, sick leave and vacation), as well as job security and opportunities for advancement. We need to take seriously efforts to reverse the trend of increasing income inequality in the U.S.聽It is bad for individuals, bad for communities, and likely bad for the country and the U.S. economy.

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