White males 5X or more in school or employed than African-American males after youth incarceration. From [HERE] Children who go through juvenile detention often lead adult lives plagued by incarceration, unemployment and other woes, and the problem is most drastic among African-American men, according to a new study by

Children who go through juvenile detention often lead adult lives plagued by incarceration, unemployment and other woes, and the problem is most drastic among African-American men, according to a new study by Northwestern University medical school professors.

The study — believed by its authors to be the first of its kind — found that African-American males who had been in Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in their youth struggled more than their white and Hispanic counterparts with employment and family life, among other areas.

The study — believed by its authors to be the first of its kind — found that African-American males who had been in Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in their youth struggled more than their white and Hispanic counterparts with employment and family life, among other areas.

The study, published online by the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics on Dec. 19, should not be taken as a condemnation of police or the juvenile justice system, said Linda Teplin, a Northwestern psychiatry professor and the study's senior author. Rather, she said, juvenile detention facilities disproportionately take in kids who already suffer the disadvantages of poverty, broken schools and other social ills.

Detention, and the consequences of carrying criminal records, may in turn increase the challenges kids face as they grow older, she said.

"To me, the obvious solution is to improve our educational system, not just in wealthy neighborhoods, but in all neighborhoods … so that all kids have an equal chance of achieving the American dream," she said.

The Northwestern Juvenile Project has for years followed some 1,800 people who came into the detention center in the late 1990s, and researchers have interviewed them face to face periodically. The researchers tracked their employment, education, family life, housing, substance use and any further arrests, among other topics.

A prior study had found that 111 of the study participants had died as of December 2011, the majority of them by homicides committed with guns, indicating a death rate vastly higher than that of the general population.

The findings of the new study were similarly bleak. After 12 years, only 1 in 5 males and 1 in 2 females had attained what the study described as "positive outcomes" in more than half of the areas of their lives that researchers studied. Only half of the participants obtained a high school diploma or its equivalent, a rate significantly lower than that of the general population; only 1 out of 5 males was working full time or in school.

The results were worst for African-American men, who trailed other study participants in numerous categories. White male participants, for example, had more than five times better odds of being in school or employed full time than African-American males after 12 years.

Hispanic male study participants tended to have fewer problems than African-American male participants, but fared worse than their white counterparts.

"On average, minorities are poorer and, in addition to that, they face great racial discrimination and hardship," Teplin said. "In every area, they face greater hardship."

The study — which Teplin authored alongside Northwestern medical school psychiatry professor Karen Abram, among others — uncovered few positive revelations, but females were found to have fared significantly better than males.

Nearly 70 percent of female participants, for example, had avoided further criminal activity as of 12 years after detention, compared with about 27 percent of males, the study found.