Juvenile incarceration and crime after release: short-term evidence from a Harsher law

ABSTRACT

We analyse the impact of longer incarceration terms in juvenile correctional facilities on short-term criminal recidivism. We exploit a legal modification in Uruguay that significantly increased the sentence length for violent crimes. We find that more time in custody, even under very harsh conditions, is associated with reductions in reoffending. Although in line with much of the related economic literature, our findings question recent empirical findings suggesting that juvenile incarceration increases criminal recidivism.

KEYWORDS:

• Juvenile crime
• recidivism
• legal modifications

Acknowldgement

We are grateful to Ruben Villaverde and Gabriel Fulco (former and current directors) of the SIRPA-INAU (Sistema de Responsabilidad Penal Adolescente - Instituto del Niño y del Adolescente del Uruguay) for opening the door for collaboration by approving the subsequent data releases for this project. We are also helpful to Cristina Alayón, Virginia Cura and Ivnonne Martinez, for generous conversations related to the data. We thank Daniel Mejía, Fabiana Machado and seminar participants at the IADB organized workshop ‘Public Policies for the Reduction and Prevention of Urban Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean’ and seminar participant at the Department of Economics of the University of Chile for useful comments and suggestions. We thank Eyal Brenner, Victoria Dotta, Erika Chabén and Emanuel Schertz for their research assistance. Errors and omissions are the authors’ only responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There have several works that explore extensive margins (see for example, Green and Winik 2010; Weatherburn and Moffatt 2011; Loeffler 2013; Nagin and Snodgrass 2013) and intensive margins (see for example, Levitt 1998; Abrams 2012).

2. General or indirect deterrence aims to discourage persons other than the offender from committing a similar offence. In other words, the deterrence is caused by the expectation of greater punishments.

3. Specific deterrence aims to persuade the person who committed the crime from future criminal acts by instilling an understanding of the consequences. In this case, it means the reduction on recidivism of those actually punished.

4. In Uruguay, the age of criminal responsibility is 18. This cut off is strictly respected by police officers: adult and juvenile systems are totally independent.

5. In October 2014 this initiative was not approved.

6. In our estimates we control for common shocks for individuals that appear more than once.

7. Strictly speaking, the judicial measure is a privation of freedom and not an incarceration in the sense that the correctional facilities used for allocating offenders are not prisons.

8. In the period 2005–2010 65% of the offences committed by adolescents were robberies and 20% thefts (López and Palummo (2013)).

9. Relative to the before the legal modification values, the difference-in-difference reduction in recidivism represent −113%, −86% and −58% of previous 30-day, 60-day and 180-day recidivism respectively.

10. The impact we found is mainly specific deterrence since there was no significant substitution of crimes given by the general deterrent effect of stronger punishments for robberies committed after the law. Among those juveniles that were incarcerated two times, 51.3% of them committed robbery as their first crime and 53.8% committed a robbery as the second crime.

11. An anonymous referee suggested the use of this crude proxy for likelihood of spending time in prison (less educated more likely) and, as he predicted, effects are lower for them.

Additional information

Funding

This work benefited from funding provided by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Notes on contributors

Néstor Gandelman

Néstor Gandelman holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Rochester. Since 2002 he directs the Department of Economics of Universidad ORT Uruguay. He is a researcher level III (highest level) of the Uruguayan National System of Researchers. His research focuses on applied microeconomics and economic development. Gandelman has served as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations, the International Food & Policy Research Institute and state agencies and is a columnist for the El País newspaper's Economy and Market supplement.

Ignacio Munyo

Ignacio Munyo holds a PhD form the Universidad de San Andrés and a Master in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is Professor of Economics at IEEM Business School, University of Montevideo and the Director of CERES (Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Economica y Social). He has more than 15 years of experience working with Latin America Macroeconomics and data-intensive projects. He has been a Nonresident Fellow at Brookings Institution, a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank, and a Research Assistant at the University of Chicago. He is member of the National Academy of Economics and the Uruguayan National System of Researchers. He is board member of the Uruguayan Economists Association and the Montevideo Stock Exchange and a columnist of newspaper El País.