| Abstract: |
Although there is debate about whether juvenile incarceration deters future
crime, it is a common practice worldwide. We contribute to this debate by
using Chilean data to assess the causal impact of different types of juvenile
incarceration on recidivism in young adulthood (18-21 years old). To address
the endogeneity issues, we use the quasi random assignment of detention judges
as instrumental variable to estimate the effect of pretrial detention, and the
quasi random assignment of public attorneys to estimate the effect of any type
of incarceration. Considering a standard IV linear model, we find that
pretrial detention increases the probability of recidivism by 61 percentage
points (pp), and when we define the treatment as any type of incarceration,
this impact is equal to 65 pp. When we estimate bivariate probit models –
using a novel approach for estimating this model in the context of fixed
effects – the impact of pretrial detention and incarceration on recidivism are
equal to 12 pp and 15 pp, respectively. We also estimate the marginal
treatment effect (MTE), finding that the magnitudes of the marginal effects
are larger for those individuals with low treatment probabilities. If we use
MTE estimates to calculate the average treatment effect (ATE), the impact of
pretrial detention on recidivism is equal to 28 pp. If we define the treatment
as any type of incarceration, this impact is equal to 36 pp. Finally, we find
that an important mechanism behind these impacts is the effect of these
different types of incarceration on high school graduation. |