Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges *

Abstract

Over 130,000 juveniles are detained in the U.S. each year with 70,000 in detention on any given day, yet little is known whether such a penalty deters future crime or interrupts social and human capital formation in a way that increases the likelihood of later criminal behavior. This paper uses the incarceration tendency of randomly-assigned judges as an instrumental variable to estimate causal effects of juvenile incarceration on high school completion and adult recidivism. Estimates based on over 35,000 juvenile offenders over a ten-year period from a large urban county in the U.S. suggest that juvenile incarceration results in substantially lower high-school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates, including for violent crimes. In an attempt to understand the large effects, we found that incarceration for this population could be very disruptive, greatly reducing the likelihood of ever returning to school and, for those who do return, significantly increasing the likelihood of being classified as having an emotional or behavioral disorder.

Revisiting Juvenile Waiver: Integrating the Incapacitation Experience*

“…This, in turn, was associated with higher recidivism rates. This finding aligns with that of prior work in which the detrimental effects of criminal justice involvement on educational outcomes were highlighted (e.g., Aizer and Doyle, 2015;Sweeten, 2006) and, in our case, underscores that it is attached to incapacitation regardless of court of jurisdiction.…”

“…Even if a youth were expelled from traditional schools, alternative schools are available until attendance is no longer mandated by state law (e.g., completion of tenth grade in Arizona). Thus, it is not surprising that Aizer and Doyle (2015) found that juvenile detention, when compared with community-based sentences, substantially lowers the odds of completing high school (see also Hjalmarsson, 2008).…”

Children’s brain activation during risky decision-making: A contributor to substance problems?

“…In adolescents those problems include substance use disorders, antisocial acts, and juvenile-justice involvement. The United States, more than any other country, continues placement and punitive incarceration for those problems (Hazel, 2008; Hockenberry, 2016), although incarceration actually decreases high school graduation rates and increases adult re-offending (Aizer and Doyle, 2015). We know of no evidence that such adolescents’ aberrant brain function, shown here to be present in childhood, improves with punishment.…”

Juvenile Waiver as a Mechanism of Social Stratification: A Focus on Human Capital*

“…Given that our sample juvenile offenders were likely to be initially detained as a result of the nature of the eligible offense and the demands on time required for juveniles to appear in court (whether juvenile or criminal), it is possible that either type of involvement in court was disruptive to traditional educational attainment in the form of a high-school diploma. It is also possible that we are simply comparing two groups who were unlikely to get much education and job training anyway (Aizer and Doyle, 2015). Even though education is mandatory in out-of-home placements in the juvenile system, only 25 percent of our retained youth were subject to punishment in a secure facility and, thus, were required to continue to pursue their education.…”

“…These findings are especially important given that an individual must actively participate in the creation and accumulation of human capital (Ben-Porath, 1967). It is suggested that adolescent offenders, in general, have low motivation with respect to educational attainment (Aizer and Doyle, 2015). To earn a diploma or GED in the adult correctional system requires not only motivation but also access to appropriate educational services, and the pool of transferred youth includes a disproportionately high number of individuals who require special educational services.…”