The Philadelphia Birth Cohort and Selective Incapacitation

Abstract

The birth cohort data from Wolfgang and colleagues' 1972 study is analyzed to determine marginal benefits (police reports and serious adjudications that would not have occurred) and marginal costs (the juvenile incarceration rate that would have resulted, as compared to present rates) if nine hypothetical incapacitation policies had been in effect at the time. None of these policies appears realistic in terms of the cost-benefit ratio.