Search

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and a supplemental COVID sample of NLSY97 respondents, we examined the associations between three measures of criminal justice contact and several indicators of labor market participation during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicated that a history of adult criminal justice contact was associated with higher odds of being out of the labor market during the pandemic. However, among those in the workforce, criminal justice contact was also associated with higher odds of stopping work, working reduced hours, experiencing decreased wages, not working from home, and having close contact with others at work. Additional analyses suggest that deeper levels of contact were sometimes associated with worse outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moffitt's snares hypothesis posits that snares—such as addiction to drugs and alcohol, time spent incarcerated, unemployment, teenage parenthood, high school dropout, and disabling injuries—can trap individuals into persistent patterns of offending during periods in the lifecourse when desistance is normative. We test this hypothesis using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to examine the associations and mechanisms between snare exposure and criminal offending during young adulthood. Results indicate that snare exposure was associated with increased offending and that this was in part due to snare exposure undermining a successful transition to adulthood, harming health, and producing social disadvantage. Moreover, the association between snare exposure and offending varied for different life-course offending trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]