Early Predictors of Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice Involvement

We examine ten cohorts of male eighth graders in public schools in Chicago, IL: 1995-2004. We find large racial disparities in academic achievement, socioeconomic status (SES), and adult criminal justice involvement. Our measures of SES and academic achievement are strong predictors of future felony arraignment and incarceration, even among students of the same race who attend the same school, but mappings between student characteristics and adult criminal justice outcomes vary greatly by race. Our measures of early achievement, SES, and early environment predict only small portions of the overall Black-Hispanic disparities in adult criminal justice involvement but typically predict at least half of Black-White criminal justice disparities and over eighty percent of Hispanic-White disparities. The relationships between various value-added measures of eighth-grade school quality and future criminal justice outcomes also vary by race. Schools that excel at promoting on-time matriculation from eighth grade to high school significantly reduce rates of criminal justice involvement among Black males.