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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

> I think that this trend, at least in part, has been influenced by a change in the way that we treat adolescent crime. For example, even when I was a kid (early 90's) you would not get arrested for getting into a fist fight at school. Nowadays, bam; call the cops.

Well, the people in this study were born in the early 80s. So I'm not sure any modern shifts that you point to are the distinctive factor.

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No, they were 18 between 1997 and 2008, so they were *born in the between 1979 and 1990, i.e., they were teenagers in the 90's or early 00's, same age as me (DOB 1983).

  "The study is an analysis of national survey data from 1997 to 2008 of teenagers and young adults, ages 18"

I guess we had different ideas of kids. This data is based on NLSY97, meaning the subjects were born between 1981 and 1985. [1]

Still, doesn't that contradict your point about these results being based on a substantial difference from when you were a kid? As you point out, this study is based on exactly your cohort. Thus it's not a matter of policies nowadays leading to 40% arrest rates. That figure is based directly on the policies of the 90s.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm

90's and 00's, yes, but it's become even more extreme. I was arrested a couple of times as a teenager, but if I had done half the things as a teen now that I did back then I would probably have spent my formative years in juvie.

I'm just saying, the trend is there. More and more kids get arrested for what I would argue is petty stuff that most kids do.

> I'm just saying, the trend is there. More and more kids get arrested for what I would argue is petty stuff that most kids do.

I don't disagree. I wholeheartedly abhor the criminalization of the current educational discipline regime.

My only point is that unfortuntely this study is not itself sufficient to comment on that ridiculous escalation, given its use of decades-old data.

I think they were born in the 80's. Which means they were kids in the 90's and early 2000's, at the very peak of the US prison population boom.

I could be wrong.

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