Mechanisms, timing, and types of the relationship between paternal criminal justice involvement and children’s health: a sibling comparison analysis

In this study, we investigate the mechanisms, timing, and types of the relationship between paternal criminal justice involvement and children’s health.

Utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 5622), we leverage the natural experiment embedded in a sibling-comparison design that adjusts for all confounding factors shared by siblings.

The results show a significant association between paternal criminal justice involvement and poorer children’s health, even when such involvement occurred before children’s birth. This association becomes more pronounced when paternal criminal justice involvement took place close to children’s birth. Furthermore, the association varies depending on the type of paternal criminal justice involvement.

These findings contribute to our understanding of the collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement, revealing that the impact can commence as early as the initial arrest and is exacerbated by subsequent conviction and incarceration.