America Is Breeding A New Generation Of Criminals By Sending Too Many Teenagers To Jail
Business Insider
Sending teenage offenders to juvenile hall makes them 13 percentage
points less likely to finish high school and 22 percentage points more
likely to be imprisoned as adults.
That's the finding of a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Anna Aizer and Joseph Doyle.
The authors looked at defendants in
Chicago juvenile courts between 1991 and 2006. Offenders were randomly
placed in front of different judges, some of whom were more likely to
send defendants to jail than others.
The authors suggest sending fewer
teenagers to jail and subjecting more to non-custodial punishments, such
as curfews and electronic monitoring, that won't interfere with them
attending school and becoming productive adults.
Jailing teenagers is expensive — $88,000 a year on average, with
total national expenditure of $6 billion annually. If this study is
right, cutting those costs would save taxpayers money, reduce crime, and
allow more teenagers to grow up into productive and well-adjusted
adults.
While I typically favor the rational cost-benefit approach towards the sentencing and treatment of offenders, we must bear in mind that by allowing young criminals to complete their education, we are endowing potentially dangerous felons with skills that may be used to cause far greater damage to society.
ReplyDeleteIf a pickpocket or a shoplifter is trained on the taxpayer's dime to become a malicious hacker or financial embezzler, wouldn't it be best to keep felons ignorant, and thus limit the danger that they pose?
If we apply the same logic that that is so often applied to firearms and weapons to the immense power of an education, wouldn't it be in society's best to exercise some form of discretion on whom we endow with an education?
Jade, why don't you give up?
DeleteIan, while I can understand where you're coming from, the downside of not trying to help offenders try to find alternative careers is that as soon as they get out they'll be forced to go back into the only job they know.
DeleteThere will always be the risk that someone will take whatever schooling they get and use it for criminal purposes.
And to think, I'd tried to hold out some hope that Greg was wrong and Ian wasn't E.N.
DeleteOf course, he's correct about the logic being the same, but that doesn't make his education control idea any better.
That is not what I meant. I do not wish to infringe on anyones right to seek an education or to better oneself.
DeleteI simply question the rationale behind using PUBLIC FUNDS to educate known criminals, as opposed to spending such scarce resources on the education of the best and brightest students or simply returning the taxpayer's money to those who have rightfully earned it, as opposed to throwing cash at dysfunctional people.
I do not wish to limit or control the education of anyone, so long as it doesn't require public money. Criminals should be free to pay their own way.
Pay no attention to Greg's rantings about my identity. At first I was Laci, then E.N., and now "Jade".
DeleteHe seeks to "discredit" me through any means possible for the sole reason that I do not envision the Second Amendment individual right to keep and bear Arms (or any other right expressly or implicitly stated in the Constitution) to apply in absolute terms. Since I do not share in his fanaticism, I must be some mysterious foe.
Ian/E.N./Jade, you take one side, then the other, then some position way over there, and so forth. I can't tell what your actual beliefs are.
DeleteBy the way, since I have maps and IP addresses, I now know that Laci isn't part of the cabal of idiocy that you named. He is his own idiot.
The link only goes to the Business Insider site, and the paper is behind a pay wall, so I'm curious as to what these authors believe works better--yes, I see what your quotation says, but I want more detail--and why.
ReplyDeleteYou know what would really help this problem? If our legislators would get to work thinking up new felonies.
ReplyDeleteYour sarcasm hits the nail on the head, TS.
DeleteWhat we need is fewer malum prohibidum crimes, and a change in focus from merely censuring the remaining real crimes with incarceration that tends to breed more criminal activity. Instead, focus on forcing the criminal to pay restitution, and on a way of shaming the criminal for their crime, but offering the removal of such shame after restitution is made and if they obey the law.
I think the same criterion for incarceration should be applied to kids as adults. Non-violent offenders should not be locked up, except in very rare and repeat cases.
ReplyDeleteWorks for me, so long as non-violent offenders are made to correct the damage that they do.
Delete