Concerns about the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Justice-Involved and Low-Income Youth

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense change and stress among adolescents. Yet, little is known about youths’ concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is particularly true among youth who have been highly impacted by the pandemic—namely, justice system-involved youth, low-income youth, and youth who consider themselves to be low status. Youth from the community, youth on probation, and incarcerated youth completed a survey describing their concerns related to COVID-19 across three concern domains: economic, social concerns, and COVID-19 itself. Results suggested that, with respect to economic concerns, incarcerated youth felt more concern about their ability to get a job if needed than youth on probation or community youth (accounting for gender and household income), and more concerned about food security (accounting for gender and subjective social status). With respect to social concerns, both incarcerated youth and youth on probation felt that the quality of their relationship with family members had decreased as a result of the pandemic, relative to community youth (accounting for gender and income), while incarcerated youth only felt that the quality of their friendships had decreased (accounting for gender and subjective social status). With respect to concerns about COVID-19, no group differences were observed about getting sick or dying from COVID-19, but low-income youth regardless of justice system status were more concerned about dying of COVID-19 than their affluent counterparts. Overall, the study gives voice to the concerns of the most vulnerable youth during the pandemic.