Turning 18: What a Difference Application of Adult Criminal Law Makes

Horst Entorf

No 5434, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on specific deterrence by addressing the issue of selecting adolescents into adult and juvenile law systems. In Germany, different from the U.S. and most other countries, turning a critical cutoff age does not cause a sharp discontinuity from juvenile to adult penal law, but rather implies a shift to a discretionary system of both adult and juvenile law, dependent on the courts' impression of moral and mental personal development of the adolescent at the time of the act. The German legal system draws the line of adulthood at some fuzzy age interval between 18 and 21, which is well above the thresholds prevailing in the U.S. (16 to 18 years, state specific) and other countries such that the German evidence entails some external evidence to the previous literature mostly relying on U.S. data. Based on a unique inmate survey and two-equation models controlling for selectivity problems, results show that application of adult criminal law instead of juvenile penal law decreases expected recidivism of adolescents.

Keywords: treatment effects; selection; survey data; recidivism; crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C52 H11 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2011-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published as 'Expected Recidivism among Young Offenders: Comparing Specific Deterrence under Juvenile and Adult Criminal Law' in: European Journal of Political Economy, 2012, 28 (4), 414-429

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Working Paper: Turning 18: What a Difference Application of Adult Criminal Law Makes (2011)
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