Almost half of black men are arrested during their teen and young adult years.
Data from a study released Monday in the journal Crime & Delinquency reports that about 49 percent of black men and roughly 38 percent of white men are arrested by the age of 23.
The study looked at data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1997 and 2008, during which survey takers reported their own arrests.
According to the study, some of the most significant findings show that men are arrested more often than women.
Race also plays a significant factor in the probability of arrests for men but not so for women, according to the data.
Robert Brame, an author of the study, said researchers are working to provide a more thorough look at the data by finding out how often arrests turn to convictions and which offenses men in this age group are committing. They’re also looking at data on subsequent offenses among people arrested in the past, he said.
“All we’re doing in this study is reporting the arrest experiences people have,” said Brame, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina.
The data documented everything other than minor traffic offenses, he said.
Most of the arrests were not for serious offenses.
However, Brame said people are still concerned about the data because the age group is so young.
“That’s a concern we have, that these high arrest rates are potentially creating difficult issues as people make the transition from adolescence to adulthood in the United States,” Brame said.
As for the uneven risk of arrest across races, Brame said the findings are “certainly consistent with everything we know about the criminal justice system.”
In Gainesville, law enforcement has already started looking into possible issues that could contribute to young and minority arrests.
Gainesville Police began efforts to study minorities in the juvenile justice system when it was awarded a Disproportionate Minority Contact grant in 2012 from the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, said GPD spokesman Officer Ben Tobias.
“We saw that there was a potential problem, so we decided to apply for a grant to study it,” he said.
A version of this story ran on page 8 on 1/8/2014 under the headline "Study finds youth arrest statistics high"
