The Great Leveler? Juvenile Arrest, College Attainment, and the Future of American Inequality.

This article examines the long-term association between officially recorded juvenile arrest and four-year college degree completion using 25 years of linked administrative criminal records and longitudinal survey data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN+). The study finds that juvenile arrest is associated with a 20 to 30 percentage-point reduction in the likelihood of graduating from a four-year college, an effect that persists across sociodemographic groups, birth cohorts, and among individuals who graduate high school and enroll in college. The analysis controls for a wide range of confounders—including school performance, delinquency, and economic hardship—and finds no evidence that system avoidance of other surveilling institutions explains the association. The findings suggest that juvenile arrest acts as a durable barrier to educational attainment, contributing to inequality in the United States, and highlight the need for higher education institutions to recognize criminal justice involvement as a distinct form of disadvantage affecting college completion.