The Legal Consequences of Loss: Parental Bereavement and Youth Criminal Legal Outcomes

General strain theory posits that parental incarceration—and the corresponding parental absence—leads to youth delinquency and criminal legal contact. However, parental incarceration represents just one form of parental absence and comparatively little research considers how a common—and permanent—form of parental absence, parental death, may similarly precipitate youth criminal legal outcomes. We use data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a broadly representative cohort of youth born around the turn of the 21st century, to examine the relationship between parental death and youth criminal legal outcomes. We find that, net of observed characteristics associated with selection into this experience, parental death is associated with higher levels of youth delinquency and incarceration. Parental death is as relevant to youth criminal legal outcomes as parental incarceration. The associations are largest among boys who experienced parental death in middle childhood or adolescence relative to early childhood. These findings underscore the profound consequences of parental death on youth trajectories, highlighting the need to consider bereavement as a critical yet understudied dimension of social inequality and risk for criminal legal involvement.