Juveniles in Jail?

A study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that juveniles who were sent to juvenile hall made them 13 percentage points less likely to finish high school and 22 percentage points more likely to be imprisoned as adults.  Business Insider had a short story highlighting the working paper by Anna Aizer and Joseph Doyle.

This paper analyzed over 35,00 juvenile offender during a 10 year period in the Chicago area. The authors found that incarceration had a minimal deterrent effect. Rather, punishments that included curfews and electronic monitoring resulted in a higher likelihood of juveniles becoming productive adults.

It costs on average of $88,000 a year, around $241 a day to keep a child in custody. With severe economic budget cuts in the North Carolina judicial system and juvenile crime decreasing in North Carolina, alternatives to incarceration and raising the minimun age  from 16 years to 18 years should be considered.

Mecklenburg County Criminal Attorney updates Provided by The Law Office of Carilyn Ibsen PLLC