Working Paper: NBER ID: w29861
Authors: E. Jason Baron; Brian Jacob; Joseph P. Ryan
Abstract: Roughly one in four juveniles arrested in the U.S. spend time in a detention center prior to their court date. To study the consequences of this practice for youth, we link the universe of individual public school records in Michigan to juvenile and adult criminal justice records. Using a combination of exact matching and inverse probability weighting, we estimate that juvenile detention leads to a 31% decline in the likelihood of graduating high school and a 25% increase in the likelihood of being arrested as an adult. Falsification tests suggest the results are not driven by unobserved heterogeneity.
Keywords: juvenile detention; high school graduation; adult criminality
JEL Codes: H76; I2; K42
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Juvenile detention (K40) | Decline in likelihood of graduating high school (I21) |
| Juvenile detention (K40) | Likelihood of being arrested as an adult (K40) |
| Juvenile detention (K40) | Probability of adult conviction (K14) |
| Juvenile detention (K40) | Probability of incarceration (K14) |
| Juvenile detention (K40) | Increase in felony offenses (K42) |
| Juvenile detention (K40) | Increase in misdemeanor offenses (K42) |