“Throwing children in prison turns out to be a really bad idea” by Brad Plumer
To read this article on the Washigton-Post website, click here.
The United States still puts more children and teenagers in juvenile detention than any other developed nations in the world, with about 70,000 detained on any given day in 2010. And as it turns out, this is very likely a bad idea. A new paper by economists Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle, Jr. offers strong evidence that juvenile detention is a really counterproductive strategy for many youths under the age of 19. Not only does throwing a kid in detention often reduce the chance that he or she will graduate high school, but it also raises the chance that the youth will commit more crimes later on in life.