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 state-operated, and public county-operated) on recidivism outcomes
and costs. The data provide detailed information on individual characteristics, criminal
and correctional histories, judge-assigned restrictiveness levels, and home zip codes
-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 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.
© 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2575Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1086/497526Publication Info
Bayer, P; & Pozen, DE (2005). The effectiveness of juvenile correctional facilities: Public versus private management.
Journal of Law and Economics, 48(2). pp. 549-589. 10.1086/497526. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2575.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Patrick Bayer
Gilhuly Family Distinguished Professor in Economics
Bayer's research focuses on wide range of subjects including racial inequality and
segregation, social interactions, housing markets, education, and criminal justice.
His most recent work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American
Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Review of Financial Studies. He is currently
working on projects that examine jury representation and its consequences, the intergenerational
consequences of residential and school segregation, neighborhood

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