Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Nearly 50,000 youth are incarcerated on any given day. Yet the best evidence to date suggests going to juvenile induces more crime. This paper presents the results of a randomized controlled trial run in the largest juvenile detention center in the United States in 2015 and 2016. The RCT was designed to credibly measure the impact of a curriculum of four youth outreach forums. Being randomly assigned to the treatment group causes a statistically significant 20 percent reduction in future spells in juvenile detention, statistically significant 51 and 53 percent reductions in drug and property crime arrests, and a nearly as large, but less precisely estimated reduction in violent crime arrests.