Justice for Juveniles? How Funding Affects the Delinquency Outcomes for Juvenile Justice Reforms

JUSTICE FOR JUVENILES? HOW FUNDING AFFECTS THE DELINQUENCY OUTCOMES FOR

JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORMS

A Thesis

submitted to the Faculty of the

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

of Georgetown University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree of

Master of Public Policy

By

, B.A.

Washington, DC

April 14, 2010

UMI Number: 1476407

All rights reserved

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JUSTICE FOR JUVENILES? HOW FUNDING AFFECTS THE DELINQUENCY OUTCOMES FOR

JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORMS

Alayna Michelle Stone, B.A.

Thesis Advisor: Jonathan Jacobson, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

While consensus about what role the juvenile justice system should play in the

lives of young people has recently shifted from a punitive position focused on

punishment to a more moderate position focused on public safety in conjunction with

effective rehabilitation, little research has explored how state juvenile justice agencies

actually use their funding to support reform efforts. This study examines the effects of

fiscal policies on juvenile recidivism in seven state juvenile justice agencies from 1998-

2008. The results reveal that funding reforms do not have consistent statistically

significant effects on future arrest and commitment rates in states where funding reflects

a commitment to juvenile justice efforts that focus on rehabilitation. Changes in secure

expenditures has statistically significant effects on total crime rates only in the third year

after changes in expenditures, while a statistically significant relationship between

community expenditures and the total crime rate is not found after one year. Why these

findings are not significant are discussed as well as possible limitations that could have

resulted in the lack of significant effects.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

Background-The Missouri Model ....................................................................................... 2

Literature Review................................................................................................................ 4

Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................................... 8

Hypothesis........................................................................................................................ 11

Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 11

Sample.............................................................................................................................. 11

Data .................................................................................................................................. 12

Measures ........................................................................................................................... 12

Analytic Technique ........................................................................................................... 14

Description of the Data ..................................................................................................... 14

Results ............................................................................................................................... 17

Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 22

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 26

Appendix A ....................................................................................................................... 27

References ......................................................................................................................... 28

1

Introduction

When the first juvenile justice system was created in 1899, its sole purpose