Juvenile Incarceration: Are We Locking Away Our Nation’s Future?

As of 2010, there were over 70,000 juveniles in detention in the US on any given day.  Courts are being given increased flexibility to handle juvenile cases differently than those of adult offenders, recognition that juvenile incarceration carries important consequences for later life outcomes. This can be observed, for example, in the “school-to-prison pipeline”, which the Obama administration recently announced a program to combat. In their 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, authors Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle, Jr. examine data on 35,000 offenders in Chicago and find that juvenile incarceration more seriously effects human capital than does adult incarceration and greatly increases the likelihood of both dropping out of high school and of incarceration as an adult.

Using 10 years of juvenile court, public school, and adult incarceration data from Chicago, the paper estimates the lifetime consequences of juvenile incarceration. Since juveniles who are incarcerated differ in many ways from juveniles who are never arrested, comparing the outcomes of the two groups would not produce accurate results. The authors instead use an instrumental variable approach to compare juveniles aged 10 to 16 who were charged with the same crimes but randomly assigned to different judges and therefore given different sentences.

The authors’ most conservative estimate for recidivism rates, taking into account the offender’s background characteristics and the severity of the crime committed, shows that incarcerated juveniles are 22 percent more likely to be incarcerated as an adult, as compared to other youth their age. More ominously, when comparing incarcerated juveniles to juveniles who were also charged with the same crimes but were not detained, those incarcerated are 15 percent more likely to be incarcerated again as an adult. This suggests that for juvenile offenders, time in a correctional facility may have a criminogenic effect.

Incarcerated juveniles are also 30 percent less likely than other youth to complete high school, with a baseline graduation rate among the study sample already at a strikingly low 43 percent. Furthermore, compared to their more similar peer group—juveniles who were charged but not detained—incarcerated juveniles are 8 percent less likely to graduate high school; this smaller population starts from an even lower 9 percent baseline graduation rate. Incarcerated juvenile offenders experience a significant and sometimes irreparable interruption on the track to high school graduation.

Incarceration effects differ somewhat for different populations. Juveniles at ages 15 and 16, which the authors note is a time of crucial academic and social development, experience the strongest incarceration effects. This group is one-third less likely to graduate high school after incarceration than the 13 to 14 age group and about 44 percent more likely to be incarcerated as an adult. Juveniles charged with non-violent crimes also experience stronger effects than those detained for violent crimes; the authors posit that “marginal” offenders—those for whom assignment to a certain judge, not their specific crime, made the difference between being sentenced to incarceration or not—are the most affected by incarceration.

The authors note that the effects of juvenile incarceration on social and academic development are not well understood. Their findings make an important contribution to the field with especially significant implications for policy. The paper notes that the US spends an average of $6 billion a year on juvenile incarceration, which is changing the life trajectory of juveniles. If this costly policy is not effective in reducing juveniles’ likelihood of committing a crime later in life and impedes their acquisition of human and social capital, then it may be doing society more overall harm than good. The authors end by suggesting, “it appears welfare enhancing to use alternatives to juvenile incarceration”; important advice that policymakers should consider.

Feature Photo: cc/(Dragon Productions Theatre)