This paper analyzes the relationships between juvenile justice system interactions and high
school graduation. When controlling for a large set of observable and unobservable
characteristics, arrested and incarcerated individuals are about 11 and 26 percentage
points, respectively, less likely to graduate high school than non-arrested individuals.
However, the effect of arrest is not robust to there being relatively little selection on
unobservable characteristics. In contrast, the incarceration effect is less sensitive to such …