Juvenile pretrial detention and adult recidivism

Abstract

Using Chilean administrative data we assess the causal impact of juvenile pretrial detention on recidivism in young adulthood (18-21). We address the endogeneity of pretrial detention using the quasi-random assignment of arraignment judges. We find that pretrial detention increases recidivism by 49 percentage points, when measured as a new criminal prosecution. Our results suggest that important mechanisms behind this impact are the e!ect of pretrial detention on conviction and on high school outcomes. Finally, we show that the large impact we find using 2SLS is partially due to the fact that compliers have an MTE that is above the ATE.