Posted on 12/20/2011 5:00:59 AM PST by Libloather
Many in U.S. Are Arrested by Age 23, Study Finds
By ERICA GOODE
Published: December 19, 2011
By age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime, according to a new study that researchers say is a measure of growing exposure to the criminal justice system in everyday life.
The study, the first since the 1960s to look at the arrest histories of a national sample of adolescents and young adults over time, found that 30.2 percent of the 23-year-olds who participated reported having been arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic violation.
That figure is significantly higher than the 22 percent found in a 1965 study that examined the same issue using different methods. The increase may be a reflection of the justice system becoming more punitive and more aggressive in its reach during the last half-century, the researchers said. Arrests for drug-related offenses, for example, have become far more common, as have zero-tolerance policies in schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thank goodness I’ve never been arrested.
(If you don’t count my development.)
It used to be that one worried about traveling in some god-forsaken place in Africa or Serbo-Croatia where you could be put in prison on a caprice and never see the light of day. Now it is the good ol’ USA that has becoem the place where you worry about getting into a tangle with some power drunk statist polizei. Only it is worse because you don’t have the State Department backed by the US military trying to get you out. Instead you have the full power of the state trying to keep you in.
Is anyone placed under arrest for a minor traffic violation?
ML/NJ
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