Prior research has provided consistent evidence that minority students are more likely than White youth to experience punitive forms of discipline in schools. Scholars have theorized that these disadvantages are closely connected to gender and socioeconomic status, but little research has explored how these factors independently and jointly might moderate the effects of race/ethnicity. Using data from the 2012 to 2018 8th and 10th grade cohorts of the Monitoring the Future survey ( N = 53,986), these analyses find that minority students are more likely than Whites to experience suspension/expulsion and office referrals, and this pattern is especially prominent among females. Further, racial/ethnic disparities are amplified for youth whose parents have higher levels of educational attainment, though some differences by gender also emerge.

Objectives: Prior contextual-level studies suggest that individuals who reside in areas with higher concentrations of foreign-born residents engage in less crime and delinquency. Yet, this work has relied on either cross-sectional models or longitudinal data with only baseline measurements of immigration, which tells us little about whether temporal changes in immigrant concentration affect changes in individual-level offending. We addressed this shortcoming by conducting a contextual-level study that uses a within-individual research design. Methods: Using public and restricted data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and U.S. Census data, we employed Bayesian random-effects models to examine the within-individual associations between the percentage of the population that is foreign-born in respondents’ county of residence and two indicators of criminal offending during adolescence and early adulthood. Results: Findings indicated that percent foreign-born was associated with subsequent reductions in criminal arrest but not self-reported offending. Moreover, we found that these effects were similar regardless of whether respondents moved or remained in place over time. Finally, for self-reported offending, the effects of percent foreign-born were stronger for first-generation immigrants, but for arrest, they were similar across generation. Conclusions: Immigrant concentration is a time-varying phenomenon that has the potential to reduce individual-level offending.

Research shows that immigrants are less criminally involved than their native-born peers when examining a host of justice-related outcomes. Yet, this knowledge tells us little about whether the immigration-crime relationship varies when disaggregating the foreign-born into more distinct groups such as legal status. Using data from the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC), we address this gap in the literature by examining whether documented and undocumented ex-inmates differ in their probability to recidivate. We also consider whether these immigrant groups reoffend at a lower, higher, or similar level when compared to the native-born. Our findings reveal that there are no differences in reoffending between documented and undocumented ex-inmates, while both groups display a significantly lower probability to recidivate relative to natives.