Recent decades have seen juvenile justice broaden its focus from the child and treatment to include offenses and accountability. This expansion, manifest in juvenile codes that support punishment and doctrines that include transfers to adult criminal court, has had significant caseload and fiscal impacts. However, a scarcity of pertinent research and of cost-benefit analyses leaves unclear whether this newer, get tough focus achieves greater delinquency reduction than previously attained. Combined with a quasi-experimental empirical simulation of the effects of punitive sanctions, a cost-benefit analysis of alternative dispositions in Dallas County, Texas, suggests that harsher sentencing can indeed prevent some offenses. The value of this gain, however, is much less than its cost to produce. As a result, by consuming public resources that might otherwise be invested in more productive purposes within or outside the justice system, the policy of toughness visits substantial opportunity costs on communities that embrace it.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.