Homicides and the Age of Criminal Responsibility in Brazil: A Density Discontinuity Approach

In Brazil, criminal offenders under the age of eighteen are subject to a different legal procedure and a lighter set of potential sanctions when compared to legal adults, regardless of the crimes they may have committed. We employ a density discontinuity design to evaluate the deterrence effect of more severe punishments around the legal age of criminal responsibility. Motivated by the criminology literature, we propose a novel proxy based on the inherent risk underlying criminal activities. Using violent death rates as a proxy for violent criminal involvement, we find no evidence of deterrence effects in the largest urban areas in the country. We additionally study arrest data from the country's third largest state and discuss advantages of our proxy in light of potential underreporting biases from using criminal records.