Millennials committed less crimes but were arrested MORE often than Gen Xers

Today’s millennials have had more run ins with the police than the generation before – dubbed Gen X – despite significantly less criminal behaviour. 

Millennials, when aged between 18 and 23, were more likely to be arrested in their youth compared to Generation Xers when they were the same age.  

The study found the discrepancy was most significant for black males, who were four times more likely to be arrested in the late 1990s than two decades before.   

In the older Gen X group surveyed in 1979, 52 per cent of individuals surveyed reported having committed at least one crime, but only 10 percent were arrested.  

In the younger millennial generation surveyed in 1997, a much lower percentage – 15 per cent – reported committing at least one crime, yet 25 per cent were arrested.  

Millennials today – anyone aged 16 to 38-years-old – in the US are more likely to be arrested today than the generation before, despite significantly fewer committing crime (stock)

The study looked at surveys taken from two groups of 18 to 23 year old individuals in 1979 and in 1997.  

This means that a higher percentage of young people were arrested having committed no crime compared to the same age group from 18 years earlier.  

The survey asked its participant to state any crimes and any contact with the police, courts and correctional institutions.  

It found that today’s millennials were more likely to have had experiences with the criminal justice system as youths despite having reported fewer criminal involvement than Generation X. 

The two groups represented the youth populations before and after a major policy change in US policing that saw focus shift to more low-level crimes.  

According to the study, this research is the first to look at how the relationship between reported criminality and involvement with law enforcement has changed across generations. 

Dr Vesla Weaver, from Johns Hopkins University and the study’s first author said: ‘Our study found that there is a loosening relationship between actually committing a crime and being arrested for the millennial generation, something that was not true for the previous generation, Gen X.’

For the 1979 Gen X group, the majority of those who reported being arrested said they had reported being involved in at least one crime, compared to the 1997 group, most of whom said they had never committed a crime. 

Young black males are also four times more likely to be arrested than their predecessors, and three times more likely compared to their white counterparts (stock)

Findings revealed that a black man who did not self-report a crime was more like to be arrested than a white men who admitted to committing a crime among millenials. 

However, the researchers caveat that the study did not examine the whole range of age groups in the millennial or Gen-Xers cohort, only 18-23 year olds.  

Additionally, drug use was not included as one of the crimes surveyed.

The impact of growing inequity in the justice system has serious socioeconomic consequences for the individual involved, say the researchers.

Police arrest is linked to lower earnings, greater chance of unemployment, lower educational attainment and a higher likelihood of continued involvement with the criminal justice system.  

The authors warned the social and economic consequences of such bias in the latest paper of the study: ‘The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime’. 

The full study is published in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.