Cohort Differences in the Cumulative Risk of Criminalization in Texas

Abstract

Studies estimating the cumulative risk of imprisonment have been central to documenting the rise of incarceration and its consequences for inequality in the United States. Data limitations have stymied efforts to document the risk of criminal legal contact falling short of imprisonment, however, and few studies estimate risks among groups other than Black and White men. Although less severe than imprisonment, subfelony contact also carries damaging and lifelong consequences. Using more than 25 years of administrative criminal record data from Texas, this study estimates the prevalence of both subfelony and felony arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration across five cohorts of Black, White, and Hispanic men and women born between 1971 and 1995. Findings show that subfelony contact is 3‒18 times as prevalent, and far more widely distributed across the population, as felony conviction and incarceration: fewer than 3% of Black women go to prison by age 24, but at least 22% are arrested at least once. Although risks of felony events have fallen substantially for some groups, subfelony criminalization has persisted at high and increasingly unequal rates. These findings have implications for our understanding of the reach of the criminal legal system and its role in shaping inequality in the twenty-first century.