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Comment by squirrelicus | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have any evidence that suggests this is because there are fewer juveniles that should be in prison, or if we're imprisoning more accurately, or there are more juvneiles that aren't in prison but should be?

There's a lot of nuance here and I haven't found any good data on what caused the change -- just political bloviation

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If you look at the data, in general America's youth has been "doing better" compared to the 80s and 90s. High school graduation rates are up [0], juvenile crime is down [1], teenage pregnancy is down [2], tobacco use was down for a long time but is seeing an uptick due to e-cigs [3]. Generally the youth population is doing better and I think that all reflects in the detention rate.

0: https://www.usnews.com/high-schools/best-high-schools/articl...

1: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05...

2: https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/reproduct...

3: https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/substance...

This is also what I was wondering. The first thing I was looked for was raw numbers. I found those here [1]. Nationwide youth confinement dropped 41% from 1995 to 2010. So the next question is how does this compare to the general change in crime rates. A convenient graph with those data is available here. [2] And we see there has been an overall 36% drop in crime rates.

And so, lacking any confounding data, it would seem to be almost fully explained by the general drop in crime. Of course now that begs the question of what's causing that drop, but that's a more actively researched question and it appears that the answer to that could likely also explain this.

[1] - https://www.aecf.org/resources/youth-incarceration-in-the-un...

[2] - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

One also wonders how a few high profile prosecutions of judges referencing kids to prison for kickbacks might have had an effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Another reference showed "peak juvenile incarceration" at ~100k kids, and 2000 cases were identified in this scandal alone, so 2% of the peak population were touched directly - and this was the most publicized incidence.

Another possibility is that lead has been removed from the ecosystem, leading to less violence.

It's probably worth being skeptical of that hypothesis, since it seems too perfect, but it does exist.

And it’s a good read too. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...

its interesting that most other comments in here are debating sociological issues rather than the medical one here, as the paper you linked pointed out. Thanks for sharing.

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