Early Predictors of Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice Involvement

By Andrew Jordan, Ezra Karger, and Derek Neal

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. Although 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, these measures predict only small portions of the overall Black-Hispanic disparities in adult criminal justice involvement. These same measures predict between roughly half or more of Black-White criminal justice disparities and over eighty percent of Hispanic-white disparities. The relationships between various valueadded measures of eighth-grade school quality and future criminal justice outcomes 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.  

WORKING PAPER · NO. 2024-140  

Chicago: University of Chicago, The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics , 2024. 52p.