Winners of the 2014 Baird Award for Outstanding Applied Research: Dr. Anna Aizer and Dr. Joseph J. Doyle Jr.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 S. Christopher Baird Award: Dr. Anna Aizer, associate professor of economics at Brown University, and Dr. Joseph J.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 S. Christopher Baird Award: Dr. Anna Aizer, associate professor of economics at Brown University, and Dr. Joseph J. Doyle Jr., associate professor of applied economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, for their research paper titled “Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges” published in June 2013 in the National Bureau of Economic Research. The S. Christopher Baird Award for Outstanding Applied Research is bestowed each year to the author(s) of one outstanding piece of applied research in child welfare or juvenile justice.

In bestowing this award, NCCD recognizes Dr. Aizer and Dr. Doyle’s exceptional contribution to the field of juvenile justice. This paper is an outstanding representation of how scientific research can be applied to questions with real-world importance. At a tremendous cost, the United States incarcerates youth at a higher rate than any other nation. By reviewing sentencing data from judges, and tracking more than 35,000 juvenile offenders over a 10-year period, Dr. Aizer and Dr. Doyle’s research suggests that juvenile incarceration results in large decreases in the likelihood of high school completion and large increases in the likelihood of adult incarceration. Alternative sentencing practices, their paper suggests, may do just as much to deter crime and carry less long-term damage.The immediate impact of their work on the field of juvenile justice is demonstrated by the widespread reference to the findings across academic, policy, advocacy, and news outlets.

Congratulations to Dr. Aizer and Dr. Doyle! NCCD would like to thank everyone who submitted a nomination and the broader community of researchers working to advance applied research in child welfare and juvenile justice.