Social
The adverse effects of criminal legal system involvement on mental health in later adulthood among young people in the United States Pui Ying Chan* Pui Ying Chan Zachary Shahn Katarzyna E. Wyka Kristin Turney Heidi E. Jones
Background
Prior studies in the United States have shown an association between criminal legal system (CLS) involvement and poor mental health. However, most studies were cross-sectional or, if longitudinal, did not address bias from treatment-confounder feedback. To address this gap, we applied the parametric g-formula to explore the relationship.
Methods
We used self-reported data on CLS encounters and mental health over the period of 2000-2010 collected among 5,611 persons from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, who were 15-21 years of age at baseline. We conducted g-computation to estimate the risks of two outcomes in 2010: having mental health symptoms, defined by the Mental Health Inventory 5-item version, and binge drinking. We adjusted for a priori confounders including sociodemographic, family contextual factors, mental health risk factors, and prior CLS involvement. We used chained equations to singly impute missing data and censored participants at first missed interview. We estimated the outcome risks under the natural course and under two interventions, removing arrests and incarcerations (“no CLS involvement”) and removing incarcerations only, to estimate the resulting risk differences (RDs).
Results
At the end of the study, 4,424 respondents remained. The estimated end-of-follow-up risk was 9.4% for mental health symptoms and 17.3% for binge drinking under the natural course of CLS involvement with no loss to follow up (which aligned closely with observed estimates). The “no-CLS involvement” intervention was estimated to lower binge drinking risk by 0.7 percentage-points (95% confidence interval [CI]: -1.5, -0.3) but had no effect on the risk for mental health symptoms (RD: -0.3, 95% CI: -0.7, 0.2). The “no incarceration” intervention had no effect on either outcome.
Conclusions
There is evidence that CLS involvement has long-lasting harm to mental health among young people as manifested through binge drinking behaviors in later adulthood.