For Black youth, a police encounter by eighth grade predicts they will be arrested by young adulthood, but research finds the same is not true for white youth.

Black young adults are 11 times more likely to be arrested by age 20 if they had an initial encounter with law enforcement in their early teens than Black youth who don’t have that first contact.

In contrast, white young adults with early police contact are not significantly more likely to be arrested later, compared with white peers without that history.

The study’s authors find that Black youth are more likely than white youth to be treated as “usual suspects” after a first encounter with police, leading to subsequent arrests over time. Even as white young adults report engaging in significantly more illegal behavior, Black young adults face more criminal penalties, the study finds.

The researchers also say it’s not just the number of stops, but what transpires during a police stop that sets the tone for future interactions with police.

“What we know about police contacts and youth generally is that Black youth are more likely to be stopped by police to begin with, and are more likely to have a negative experience when that happens,” says first author Annie McGlynn-Wright, a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University who led the study while pursuing her doctorate at the University of Washington. “What we haven’t known previously is the long-term effects of police contacts in terms of criminal justice outcomes.”

McGlynn-Wright adds that the study, which appears in the journal Social Problems, shows these early contacts with police create a “system response” to Black youth that white youth don’t experience.

Read the full article about police encounters with Black v. white teens by Kim Eckart at Futurity.