One-third of young U.S. adults have been arrested

 

By Genevra Pittman
Reuters

 

NEW YORK- Close to one in three teens and young adults get arrested by age 23, suggests a new study that finds more of them are being booked now than in the 1960s.

 

Those arrests are for everything from underage drinking and petty theft to violent crime, researchers said. They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that’s more apt to arrest young people than in the past.

 

“The vast majority of these kids will never be arrested again,” said John Paul Wright, who studies juvenile delinquency at the University of Cincinnati’s Institute of Crime Science, but wasn’t involved in the new study.