Juvenile Law and Recidivism in Germany – New Evidence from the Old Continent

Stefan Pichler () and Daniel Römer

No 519, Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the effect of the criminal justice system on juvenile recidivism. Using a unique sample of German inmates, we are able to disentangle the selection into criminal and juvenile law from the subsequent recidivism decision of the inmate. We base our identification strategy on two distinct methods. First, we jointly estimate selection and recidivism in a bivariate probit model. In a second step, we use a discontinuity in law assignment created by German legislation and apply a (fuzzy) regression discontinuity design. In contrast to the bulk of the literature, which mainly relies on US data, we do not find that the application of criminal law increases juvenile recidivism. Rather, our results suggest that sentencing adolescents as adults reduces recidivism in Germany.

Keywords: crime; juvenile recidivism; regression discontinuity; bivariate probit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C21 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
Note: This paper is part of http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/view/schriftenreihen/sr-3.html
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-128050 Frontdoor page on HeiDOK (text/html)
https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver ... oemer_2011_dp519.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:awi:wpaper:0519

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabi Rauscher ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).