In this project, I will develop five complementary lines of research, leveraging data from the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS), that will together advance knowledge on how the justice system intentionally and unintentionally shapes the lives of individuals, families, and their communities in the U.S. The first study will document variation in cumulative risk of justice-involvement across jurisdictions and over birth cohorts, quantifying how such variation relates to observed patterns of economic inequality, racial disparities, and evolving family structure in the United States. The second study will focus on the children of justice-involved individuals and document how events like criminal charges, convictions, and incarceration contribute to household instability for minor children. The third study will examine the implications of rising rates of contact with the justice system over the last half-century for retirement cohorts over the next 30 years and evaluate how class action lawsuits that expanded access to safety-net assistance for aging justice-involved individuals altered their future trajectories in old age. The fourth study will document barriers to entrepreneurship within the justice-involved community and use variation in criminal history-based eligibility restrictions to measure the causal effect of federal small business loans on recidivism and business outcomes. The fifth study will investigate discrepancies between law enforcement and self-reported race and ethnicity information and study the implications both for individual outcomes in the justice system and for the accuracy of federal statistical series.
