Office-based mental healthcare and juvenile arrests

We estimate the effect of local access to office-based mental healthcare on juvenile arrest outcomes. We leverage variation in the number of offices of physicians and non-physicians specializing in mental healthcare in a county over the period 1999-2016 in a two-way fixed-effects regression. Office-based treatment is the most common modality of mental healthcare received by juveniles. We find that 10 additional offices of physicians and non-physicians specializing in mental healthcare in a county leads a decrease of 2.3%-2.6% in the per capita costs to society of juvenile arrest. Findings are similar for arrest rates although often less precise, which suggests that accounting for social costs is empirically important. Crime imposes substantial costs on society and individuals, and interventions during early life can have more pronounced effects than those received at later stages, therefore our results imply increased juvenile access to mental healthcare may have an unintended benefit for the current and future generations.