The Impact of Juvenile Detention on Recidivism

The optimal detention policy for juvenile delinquents presents a challenge to the criminal justice system, which must balance the well-being of the community with that of the juvenile. Detention is often used as a way to protect the community by preventing a juvenile from committing more crimes while awaiting adjudication of the juvenile’s current criminal offense. Detention may however adversely impact a juvenile’s outcomes later in life and encourage future criminal activity. Theory suggests that detention could impact recidivism through a number of counteracting channels, including an increase in perceived crime costs, disruption of human capital development, and facilitation of criminal capital acquisition. A clear estimate of the net impact of these channels has evaded past empirical analyses, due in large part to endogeneity issues – arrestees with the greatest risk of future criminal activity may be those most likely detained. This study mitigates such issues by exploiting exogenous variation in pre-adjudication detention stemming from the variation of detention tendencies among randomly assigned probation officers. Through 2SLS estimates, this study finds no statistically significant relationship between pre-adjudication detention and a given juvenile’s likelihood of committing a new offense.