The Economics of Juvenile Jurisdiction

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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Debates about whether to handle young offenders in the criminal or juvenile justice system traditionally focus on moral and legal principles, developmental differences between juveniles and adults, and the relative effectiveness of prevention versus punishment. This white paper examines the feasibility of adding an economic perspective to the debate. It considers the tools of cost-benefit analysis and how they might be employed to assess the economic consequences of criminal versus juvenile justice. In other words, do the benefits of using a separate system for juvenile offenders outweigh the costs? What are the costs and benefits of criminal court trials for young people and are they measurable? Are there particular types of offenders or particular court cases for which one system of justice is more cost-effective than the other?

This paper grows out of a meeting organized by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice (http://www.mac-adoldev-juvjustice.org). The Research Roundtable on Estimating the Costs and Benefits of the Separate Juvenile Justice System was held in 2004 at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. The Research Roundtable included experts in adolescent development, juvenile justice, public policy, and economics. Members of the roundtable reviewed various approaches for analyzing the costs and benefits of juvenile versus criminal justice and considered a range of methods for conducting research on the topic. The Urban Institute drew upon the comments of participants to prepare this paper. The discussion that follows describes the conclusions of the Research Roundtable and recommends a potential research agenda for investigating the economic consequences of legal decisionmaking in cases involving youthful offenders.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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