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Title: Drugs, Dorms, and Disparities: How College Contributes to Punishment Inequality
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Fink, Joshua
Drugs, Dorms, and Disparities: How College Contributes to Punishment Inequality
Presented: San Francisco CA, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2014
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): Arrests; College Enrollment; Crime; Criminal Justice System; Drug Use; Housing/Housing Characteristics/Types; Life Course; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Latent Class Analysis/Latent Transition Analysis

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Recent trends in United States' drug laws and law enforcement practices have inspired much research on punishment inequality and the mass incarceration of illicit drugs users. Existing studies have identified important contributing factors, such as racial discrimination and unequal access to sufficient legal counsel, but many mechanisms that could potentially contribute to punishment inequality have not been examined. Using the life-course perspective and ideas present in differential institutional engagement theory, this study examines how college enrollment and residency impact who is arrested and punished for drug charges. With data from the NLSY97, I analyze between- and within-individual variation in drug arrests and charges using random, fixed, and hybrid effects regression. I also examine latent trajectories of drug arrests for respondents enrolled and not-enrolled in college using group-based finite mixture modeling. I find college enrollment and living in a college dormitory decrease an individual's risk of being arrested and charged with a drug offense. Further, I find the effects of college enrollment on the probability of a drug arrest hold net of the level of illegal substance use. I conclude that campuses and dormitories protect drug using college students from punishment, and college enrollment may be an important, unexamined mechanism driving inequalities in drug arrests and incarceration.
Bibliography Citation
Fink, Joshua. "Drugs, Dorms, and Disparities: How College Contributes to Punishment Inequality." Presented: San Francisco CA, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2014.