Juvenile Delinquency: Crime and Prosperity in India - PowerPoint Presentation

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Juvenile Delinquency:Crime and Prosperity in India

Nabamita Dutta (U Wisconsin, La-Crosse) Dipparna Jana (CSSSC)

Saibal Kar (Calcutta University and IZA, Bonn)

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Delinquency among juveniles covers misdemeanor and felony as part of individual/group behavior.

This is the first paper to show that incidence of juvenile crime across states in India is significantly explained by net state domestic product per capita – rising when income grows – and falling, once the state attains a critical per-capita income.

If the percentage of arrested children belonging to households with annual income less than $400 increases, it enhances the state-wide incidence of juveniles committing property crime.States with higher percentages of arrested children coming from poorest households benefit more --- for these states one standard deviation rise in NSDP per capita raises crime by a smaller amountAdult crime nullifies the moderating impact of rising income on juvenile crime

Introduction and Take Away

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Oliver Twist during industrial revolution in Britain to the graphic US-based 'Juveniles in Justice' by Richard Ross or to the most recent account of rape in New Delhi

In USA, about 70,000 juveniles

are detained on any given day (Aizer and Doyle Jr., 2013) and the combined public and private expenditure aimed at deterring crime amounts to about US100 bn. annuallyConcern of economists about crime is not a new phenomenon --- well known papers by Becker (1968), Fleisher (1966), Freeman (1996), Glaeser and Sacerdote (1999), Jacob and Lefgren (2003), Di Tella and Schargrodsky (2004), Williams and Sickles (2002), Levitt (1998, 2004), Lochner and Moretti (2004), Lee and McCrary (2005), etc.

Complex literature in terms of a wide variety of influential factors. These studies include Levitt (1998), Levitt and Lochner (2001), Roman and Butts (2005), Mansour

et al. (2006), United Nations (2010), Patachhini and Zenou (2012), Merlo and Wolpin (2015), Kang (2016).

Motivation and Literature

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To clarify various ambiguities with regard to impact of inequality on crime, Chisholm and Choe (2005) relate Gini and mean income of a given society with criminal activities - although, not juvenile crime

However, what if criminals observe relative income or wealth rather than direct income, which is often unobservable? If information plays a significant role in criminal behaviour, then violent crime shall be based on observable wealth inequality but not on inequality in total expenditure (for US states, see, Hicks and Hicks, 2014). The infamous Nirbhaya incident in New Delhi in 2012, or the brutal murder of a standard XII student by his four minor friends in Greater Noida (near New Delhi) with police finding the body in Aligarh 27 Kms away – impact on society -----In India alone, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports 100 to 300% rise in juvenile crime across cities and towns - between 2005 and 2014

, the number of reported incidents

went up from 18,939 to 33,526

Introduction...Income Link and Indian Cases

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Does this have a lot to do with rise in per capita income as well as inequality coupled with high illiteracy rates and school dropouts?

Are regulations and punishments inadequate (law enforcement officers in many places agree that heinous crime committed by youth in the borderline of adulthood go under-punished)?

Should one factor in the influence of adult crime and conformist group behavior among teens (see Patacchini and Zenou, 2012, Calvo-Armengol, Verdier and Zenou, 2007)?Levitt (1998, JPE) also takes up the incidence and persistence of juvenile crime and how it is influenced by several factors – household income, parental education, adult crime rate, neighbourhood effects, etc . Evidence is from the US.So, Questions

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Demombynes and Ozler (2005) for local inequality and crime in South Africa. The richer neighborhoods face on average 32% higher burglary rates.

Inequality may also lead to violent crime. In Mexico, a one point increase in Gini coefficient leads to 36% rise in drug-related homicide – an outcome of capturing larger territories in the municipalities (see Enamorado,

et al, 2016). Kang (2016) shows that economic segregation across neighborhoods remain responsible for the correlation between violent crime and economic inequality

Further, Mocan and Rees (1999) uses micro-data from high school (1995, Gallup survey) to investigate if neighborhood characteristics and deterrence policies have strong influence on incidence.

Available Answers

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They find that an increase in violent crime arrests reduces the probability of selling drugs and assaulting someone for males, and reduces the probability of selling drugs and stealing for females

An increase in local unemployment increases the propensity to commit crimes, as does local poverty

For India, the government set an elaborate policy of attending to juvenile delinquency via The Juvenile Justice Act (henceforth, J. J. Act) of India, 1986 (amended in the year 2000).In principle, it was aimed at offering legal protection to children exposed to and participating in criminal activitiesThe present paper accommodates a time scale whereby the reported incidences right before the Act was adopted by most states in India, and the longer period following that, is duly represented

Available Answers and Indian Evidence

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A few state level graphical relations between net state domestic product and incidence of property crime, these tend to peak (except for Delhi) around the adoption and implementation of the Act, following which the downslide is directly observable

Relations

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Figure 1: Association between per-capita NSDP and

Incidences of Property Crime committed by Juveniles

in six States in India, 2001-2013Madhya Pradesh

B. Gujarat

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We adopt the standard NCRB report’s definition throughout, by considering crime under Indian Penal Code (IPC)

Violent crime includes murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and abduction and hurt. Property crime includes burglary and theft Violent and property crimes represent a limited subset of all crimes. Omitted from these categories are all those crimes that are recorded under the Special and Local Laws (SLL).

We shall focus relatively more on the violent and property offenses especially owing to the larger frequency associated with these at the state level

Data and Definitions

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Data and Methodology

For our benchmark specifications we consider, the household income of the arrested children, incidences of adult crime and incidences of children arrested and sent to court

Importantly, the general observation from the data is that the incidence varies substantially across states and across important cities.Therefore, the state-level characteristics, distribution of household income, education, depth and spread of law enforcement, mean employment status, presence of juvenile homes, etc have been considered. The explanatory variables include, the net state domestic product (NSDP) and estimated mid-year population as taken from the Central Statistic Organization (CSO, GoI).

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West Bengal

According to the Annual Report of Women and Child Development Department, Government of West Bengal (GoWB), 2010-2011 – the state has a foolproof child protection mechanism in terms of

JJBs, Child Protection Committee, Special Juvenile Police Unit and a child protection society in every district.The budget for children from 2007-08 to 2011-12 reveals that regarding sectoral allocation “child protection” is somewhat neglected with average percentage in total state budget being only 0.05%. In West Bengal, Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare is the nodal department.

Both in the case of Government and NGO run homes notified under JJ Act, GoWB allocated Rs. 1100 per child per month for their up keep. Out of that, Rs. 250 is contributed by Government of India before Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) norms were formulated.

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Juvenile Homes under JJ ACT

In West Bengal as per the Juvenile Justice Act 2000 there are 18 existing Government run Homes and 21 existing NGO run homes.

District-wise distribution of Homes are –

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Data and Methodology

The share of employment across states is taken from the NSSO 61

st (2004-2005) and 66th (2009-2010) round survey (Working group on 12th Plan – Employment, Planning and Policy).We estimate the following specification (state fixed effects):

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Description

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Results

NSDP

and NSDP2 are significant for all specifications. The sign of the coefficient of NSDP and

NSDP

2 implies that state domestic product has a concave relationship with the level of incidences of juveniles committing property crime

The lagged variable has a negative but insignificant impact.

Per-capita police strength and its square term are significant and represents a convex relation with the dependent variable

With a rise in police strength for a state, the incidences of juveniles committing property crime declines but the rate of decline occurs at an decreasing rate –

children and teens not too afraid of the police?

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Second Set

To explore the second part of the study, i.e., the impact of state income on the incidences of property crime committed by the juveniles conditioned upon the other state specific factors that can also influence such incidences, we consider the following empirical specification

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Description

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Description

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Results

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Marginal Effects

For example,

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State Comparison for Incidence by poor household

For a given state it may so happen that an overwhelmingly large number of arrested children originate in households in the lowest income bracket (33% for Uttar Pradesh).

In another state, this proportion may be 7%, only (Gujarat). We argued that this might have to do with the per capita income level of a particular state. Subsequently, these shares were interacted with the state level per capita income. We showed that for the first kind of state, an equivalent rise in per capita NSDP is much more beneficial than that enjoyed by the second kind of state.

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We also considered the propensity of adult crime and state-specific employment share in explaining the differential impact at the state level.

We showed that the influence of adult crime is positive and significant on preponderance of juvenile crime.

Our results further show that state income does not necessarily act as a moderator in terms of ‘peer’ and ‘deterrence’ effects. Interestingly, we found that while deterrence has an expected direct negative impact on juvenile crime, interaction with per capita NSDP counters the beneficial impact. A richer state may witness rise in delinquency if they raise the degree of deterrence. In this regard, one needs to explore further the somewhat fuzzy line between crime deterrence and repression in a given society.Concluding Remarks

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Thank you for your time