Arrested Friendships? Justice Involvement and Interpersonal Exclusion among Rural Youth

• Author: Daniel T. Ragan,Wade C. Jacobsen,Emily L. Nadel,Mark E. Feinberg,Mei Yang
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00224278211048942
• Subject Matter: Original Research Articles

Arrested Friendships?

Justice Involvement

and Interpersonal

Exclusion among

Rural Youth

Wade C. Jacobsen

1

,

Daniel T. Ragan

2

, Mei Yang

3

,

Emily L. Nadel

4

,

and Mark E. Feinberg

5

Abstract

Objectives: We examine the impacts of adolescent arrest on friendship net-

works. In particular, we extend labeling theory by testing hypotheses for

three potential mechanisms of interpersonal exclusion related to the stigma

of arrest: rejection, withdrawal, and homophily. Method: We use longitudi-

nal data on 48 peer networks from PROSPER, a study of rural youth

1

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD,

USA

2

Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

3

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD,

USA

4

Fors Marsh Group, Arlington, VA, USA

5

Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Wade C. Jacobsen, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland,

2220H Samuel J. LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

Email: wcj@umd.edu

Original Research Article

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2022, Vol. 59(3) 365–409

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278211048942

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

followed through middle and high school. We test our hypotheses using

stochastic actor–based models. Results: Our f‌indings suggest that arrested

youth are less likely to receive friendship ties from school peers and are

also less likely to extend them. Moreover, these negative associations are

attenuated by higher levels of risky behaviors among peers, suggesting

that results are driven by exclusion from normative rather than nonnorma-

tive friendships. We f‌ind evidence of homophily on arrest but it appears to

be driven by other selection mechanisms rather than a direct preference

for similarity on arrest. Conclusions: Overall, our f‌indings speak to how an

arrest may foster social exclusion in rural schools, thereby limiting social

capital for already disadvantaged youth.

Keywords

arrest, peer networks, rural schools, social exclusion

Millions of Americans pass through criminal justice systems each year, and

this has consequences for their social bond or integration into society. The

rupturing of this bond, manifested through diminished participation in con-

ventional institutions and blocked or broken normative relationships, is

referred to as social exclusion (Silver 1994; Travis 2002). Social exclusion

is harmful because it leaves individuals with less social capital (i.e., fewer

resources upon which to draw from institutional ties and social networks;

Coleman 1988; Daly and Silver 2008) and lower informal social control

(i.e., less social pressure toward conformity and law abidance; Sampson

and Laub 1993, 1997). Two lines of research on this topic have emerged

in the wake of mass incarceration. The f‌irst examines associations

between justice involvement and institutional participation, such as employ-

ment, education, and civic engagement (Pager 2003; Burch 2011; Brayne

2014). The second centers on interpersonal relationships, such as ties to

family or others (Braman 2004; Turney 2015). Each attends to a different

manifestation of social exclusion. We, therefore, follow Jacobsen (2020)

by referring to the f‌irst as institutional exclusion and the second, which is

the focus of this paper, as interpersonal exclusion. Our study centers on

the mechanisms by which justice contact may foster interpersonal exclusion.

Labeling theory, particularly when considered from a life course perspec-

tive (Sampson and Laub 1997; Elder 1998), is a useful framework for under-

standing the consequences of justice involvement for social exclusion. One

of its key propositions is that legal sanctions that are stigmatizing increase

366 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 59(3)

the risk of exclusion from institutional participation and interpersonal ties

(Goffman 1963; Paternoster and Iovanni 1989). In testing this proposition,

research on institutional exclusion has made more headway than studies of

interpersonal exclusion have in explaining associations with justice involve-

ment. In particular, there seems to be a broad consensus that stigma is a key

mechanism in explaining why applicants with criminal histories are less

likely to f‌ind stable employment or housing or to be admitted to a college

or university (Evans and Porter 2015; Stewart and Uggen 2020; Sugie,

Zatz, and Augustine 2020). In contrast, the role of stigma in interpersonal

exclusion is less clear. Some research suggests that criminal justice stigma

may be transferred through social networks to the family or friends of indi-

viduals who are directly involved in the justice system (Braman 2004;

Tinney 2020), but few studies suggest stigma is responsible for severing

close social ties (Massoglia, Remster, and King 2011).

There are at least two reasons for the inconsistency between the proposi-

tion of interpersonal exclusion and the f‌indings of prior research. First, pre-

vious studies have centered on intimate family relations rather than

nonfamily ties like friendships (Geller 2013; Siennick, Stewart, and Staff

2014). Although they both play critical roles in human development, friend-

ships may be more susceptible to breakup by criminal justice stigma because

they are generally less bound by expectations of long-term devotion.

Therefore, we examine friendship ties in this study and concentrate on ado-

lescence, a stage in the life course when friends are central to one’s social

network (Warr 2002). Normative friendships, def‌ined as close relationships

with peers who are involved in conventional activities and who avoid devel-

opmentally risky behaviors, are a key source of social capital and control in

adolescence. They offer socialization, companionship, and information that

benef‌it youth and increase their stake in conformity as they near the transi-

tion to adulthood (Hirschi 1969; Stanton-Salazar and Dornbusch 1995).

Thus, it is important to understand how youth form peer relationships and

to identify barriers to normative friendships. Criminal justice stigma is

one factor that may affect friendship preferences. Specif‌ically, we focus

on arrest, which many US youth experience (between 16 percent and 27

percent; Brame et al. 2012) and which has been linked to such negative out-

comes as diminished educational attainment and subsequent behavior prob-

lems (Kirk and Sampson 2013; Wiley, Slocum, and Esbensen 2013).

Second, prior studies use broad national samples that mask more specif‌ic

contexts in which justice contact occurs (e.g., Massoglia, Remster, and King

2011), or they rely on disadvantaged urban samples where justice contact

resembles a “normalized”rather than stigmatized experience (e.g., Turney

Jacobsen et al. 367