Youth criminal legal involvement linked to poorer mental health in adulthood

Researchers examined the long-term mental health effects of criminal legal system involvement using data from 5,611 participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, covering 2000–2010. In this observational study, they applied the parametric g-formula, adjusting for confounding, to compare estimated outcomes under the natural course of involvement with hypothetical interventions eliminating arrests and incarcerations or incarceration alone. Outcomes were depressive symptoms assessed using the five-item Mental Health Inventory and self-reported emotional, mental health or psychiatric problems.

At the end of follow-up, the estimated risk under the natural course was 9.5% for each outcome. Eliminating arrests and incarcerations yielded estimated risk differences of −0.4 percentage points for depressive symptoms (95% CI −0.8 to −0.04) and −0.6 percentage points for mental health problems (95% CI −1.0 to −0.3). Confidence intervals were derived from 300 bootstrap samples. Eliminating incarceration alone did not provide evidence of an effect.

The findings support considering criminal legal system involvement as a social determinant of mental health, although the estimated absolute differences were small. These were modeled interventions rather than experimentally tested changes, and causal interpretation depends on the modeling and confounding assumptions. The abstract alone does not establish a separate causal effect of arrests; full-text methods were unavailable for assessment.