Differences in Justice, Differences in Outcomes: A DID Approach to Studying Outcomes in Juvenile and Adult Court Processing

Abstract

For almost half a century, there has been an ongoing philosophical debate regarding the appropriateness of processing youth in adult courts. Since the juvenile system was theoretically designed to rehabilitate and the adult system to punish, one could assume that there should be key differences in both experiences and outcomes across systems. Yet empirical findings remain mixed. However, almost all existing studies are plagued by issues of selection bias and examine only sentencing or recidivism outcomes. This study overcomes these limitations by addressing both sentencing and recidivism as well as capitalizing on a legislative policy change that increased the age of criminal responsibility for all youth in Connecticut. Using a difference in difference modeling strategy, we find that the system of processing matters somewhat for sentencing outcomes with youth in the juvenile system being more likely to receive probation. However, youth processed in the juvenile court also recidivated at a slightly higher rate, which is contrary to expectation. We explore several possible meanings for these findings and end with a call for future research to include qualitative analysis of actual youth experience—regardless of the system of processing—as more probable indicators of later life outcomes.