The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA) was a landmark federal law that sought to raise standards for juvenile detention, and support juvenile re-entry into education and the labor force. The structure of law relies on supporting local and state efforts to prevent delinquency and improve juvenile justice systems, through an entity called a State Advisory Group (SAG), supported by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). In this research project, I hope to evaluate this state and local funding through a difference-in-differences econometric model.

Once a state "establish[ed] plans for the administration of juvenile justice in their states and agree[d] to submit annual reports to OJJDP concerning their progress in implementing the plans," the state would receive a formula grant which the state’s SAG could allocate towards juvenile justice initiatives in a number of different categories (CRS 2019). The grant is awarded based on a state’s juvenile population, and there is a minimum amount of funding a state can receive. As of 2023, 45 of the 50 states participate in the Act. I hope to exploit this variation in roll-out by state in order to evaluate the impact of the law on crime outcomes, measures of juvenile detention, and conditions in juvenile justice facilities.

For more on this research, check out the attached poster!