Recent research argues that because markets for stolen goods act as incentives to steal, police and criminologists should shift attention from thieves to methods of disrupting demand for the goods. The underlying research, however, is too thin to support this advice. Effective policy requires considerably more investigation. Analysis of pawn transaction data from Texas supports this assessment. It suggests that proposals to disrupt demand are unlikely to succeed, partly because similar actions already applied to pawnshops have shown limited effect, mainly because hot goods are invisible in the daily flow of secondhand merchandise through the general retail market. Police and criminologists should remain focused on thieves and their apprehension, and on pursuing ways to do this more efficiently, such as through improved tracking of pawn transactions. There may be other intervention possibilities as well, but much more empirical research is required to identify them.
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.
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