The Effectiveness of Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Public versus Private Management

Abstract

This paper uses data on juvenile offenders released from correctional facilities in Florida to explore the effects of facility management type (private for-profit, private nonprofit, public stateoperated, and public county-operated) on recidivism outcomes and costs. The data provide detailed information on individual characteristics, complete criminal and correctional histories, judge-assigned restrictiveness levels, and home zipcodes—allowing us to control for the nonrandom assignment of individuals to facilities far better than any previous study. Relative to all other management types, for-profit management leads to a statistically significant increase in recidivism, but, relative to nonprofit and state-operated facilities, for-profit facilities operate at a lower cost to the government per comparable individual released. Cost-benefit analysis implies that the short-run savings offered by for-profit management over nonprofit management are negated in the long run due to increased recidivism rates, even if one measures the benefits of reducing criminal activity as only the avoided costs of additional confinement.