The EITC as an Early Intervention to Reduce Criminal Justice System Contact

• In Event: Youth Interventions and Crime

Abstract

Crime rates across the United States drastically and unexpectedly began to drop in the early 1990’s; this drop was driven by cross-cohort differences, with younger millennials and gen-z increasingly less likely to be system-involved. This phenomenon has coincided with a substantial reduction in childhood poverty. While growing up in poverty is directly associated with a host of risk factors for system-involvement, there has been little direct evidence of a causal linkage between these co-occurring declines. This paper estimates the effects of expansions in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a safety net benefit credited with much of the reduction in childhood poverty, on the overall downward crime trend and decrease in system-involvement among youth and young adults. Using a novel dataset linking Census data with records from the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS), and drawing on variation in EITC benefits induced by federal and state-level expansions, I find statistically significant and heterogeneous effects by race based on exposure to EITC benefits in the critical phase of early childhood development: exposure to the EITC between the ages of 0 - 5 is associated with a reduction in violent crime conviction in adulthood for Black individuals. This finding indicates that the safety net, and specifically a program with capability for federal, state, and local-level expansions, can act as a policy lever to both reduce system involvement for a highly vulnerable population and to reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Author

• Danielle Sobol, RAND School of Public Policy
  Presenting Author