Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2758
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Item Exploring the Nuances of the School-to-Prison Cycle(2024) Tinney, Erin; Jacobsen, Wade; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Discussions of the School-to-Prison Pipeline often focus on a unidirectional pathwaybetween the education and justice systems, but prior research suggests that it is important to also assess the reverse relationship: how justice system involvement impacts one’s education. I expand on this prior work by exploring how justice system involvement in adolescence impacts key educational outcomes and testing some of the potential nuances of this relationship. The current study examines the relationship between justice system involvement in high school and educational outcomes for the 2013 Maryland public school ninth grade cohort. I utilize propensity score matching to compare justice-involved and similarly situated non-justice-involved youth in their likelihood of suspension in the 12th grade, graduation, and postsecondary enrollment. I compare these impacts across school district and the level of one’s system involvement, which includes arrest, adjudication, in-community placement, and out-of-community placement (i.e., incarceration). I also explore the potential role of absence from school in the relationship between justice system involvement and educational outcomes and how the impact of system involvement may vary between youth of different racial identities and sexes, including at the intersection of one's race and sex. I conduct sensitivity analyses that further assess the nuances of this relationship based on the timing and dosage of one’s system involvement and different specifications of my educational outcomes. I find that justice system involvement is associated with worse educational outcomes and that the impact of involvement varies by school district, one’s level of system involvement, and their demographic characteristics. I also find that school absence may impact this relationship. Overall, this study builds upon prior research of the consequences of justice system involvement, particularly on one’s education, by exploring the nuances of this relationship based on one’s demographic characteristics, educational context, and factors related to their system involvement. The results of this study suggest that perhaps the School-to-Prison Pipeline may be best conceptualized as a School-to-Prison Cycle that could impact adolescents long after their system involvement.Item INVESTIGATING THE ‘STICKINESS’ OF STIGMA FOLLOWING A FRIEND’S POLICE CONTACT(2020) Tinney, Erin; Jacobsen, Wade; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The consequences of police contact for youth have been established in the prior literature (e.g., Kirk & Sampson, 2013), yet the potential for guilt by association after police contact has not been thoroughly explored. The current study examines how a youth’s police contact may increase the likelihood of a friend’s police contact after controlling for behavior and other characteristics that are associated with justice system involvement. This study expands upon labeling theory and the concept of “stickiness” by testing whether guilt by association could act as a status characteristic that is “sticky” in two ways. Using longitudinal data from a sample of rural youth, I find that a friend’s police contact is associated with an increase in the likelihood of one’s own contact after accounting for other predictors of police contact. Thus, this study provides additional evidence that police contact may be harmful for youth and their social network.