Augmenting, Analyzing, and Archiving Criminal Trajectories in Four Birth Cohorts from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, 1995-2023

• NCJ Number: 310656
• Date Published: September 2025
• Length: 18 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2020-JX-FX-0002
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Abstract

This project examined crime, criminal justice, and the life course across multiple birth cohorts. Its main themes included the intergenerational nature of criminal justice contact, the foundations of racial disparities in arrests, the assessment of predictive algorithms commonly employed in the criminal justice system, and the long-term effects of a criminal record on educational attainment. Adding to longitudinal, multi-cohort data on life-course turning points, pathways, and outcomes from over 1,000 participants in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN+), this project gathered, linked, and analyzed criminal histories for the study participants, allowing evaluation of how existing criminological theories and predictive models perform over time. The integrated data contained over 25 years of criminal histories and an age range spanning infancy to age 43. Key findings from grant papers include:

• The intergenerational nature of criminal justice contact. This research found that parental criminal justice contact elevates the adult criminal justice contact of the children of the prison boom, independent of traditional background factors and the often-overlooked family troubles that predate criminal justice contact. The intergenerational association of criminal justice contact across generations in recent birth cohorts is strongest among the White population. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-11153107
• Social foundations of racial disparities in arrests. This research demonstrated that large Black–White disparities in arrests from ages 10 to 40 arise from racial inequalities in exposure to cumulative childhood advantages and disadvantages rather than from race-specific effects. Inequalities in early-life structural factors, which themselves are historically shaped, trigger processes of cumulative advantage and disadvantage that produce racial disparities in arrests over the life course and that persist across different points in contemporary history. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12374
• Cohort bias in predictive risk assessments of future criminal justice contact. This paper analyzes predictive risk assessment instruments used in the criminal justice system—and more specifically, the impact of social change on the accuracy of these instruments. The results show that risk-factor prediction models are prone to systematic and substantial error. Regardless of model type or predictor sets, a tool trained to predict the likelihood of arrest between the ages of 17 and 24 on older birth cohorts systematically overpredicts the likelihood of arrest for younger birth cohorts over the period 1995 to 2020. Moreover, the relationships between key risk factors and future arrest are unstable over time. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301990120
• Juvenile Arrest and College Attainment. Drawing on 25 years of administrative data on criminal histories from Illinois merged with longitudinal cohort data, this article examines whether a recorded juvenile arrest continues to influence educational outcomes beyond high school. Findings indicate that being arrested as a minor is independently associated with a decrease in study participants’ likelihood of graduating from a four-year college by about 20–30 percentage points. This penalty remains even for students who entered college and is consistent across cohorts and sociodemographic groups. By showing how early legal involvement perpetuates later inequality, the study underscores the need for colleges to address the unique needs of system-involved students. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251338844)

For a full list of project abstracts, publications, and data, see https://sites.harvard.edu/phdcn/.