The Chicago Reporter recently dedicated an issue to youth in the juvenile and criminal justice system. Illinois joined most other states this year when it raised its age of juvenile jurisdiction to include 17 year-olds charged with misdemeanors. (Massachusetts is a rarity, excluding all 17 year-olds from the juvenile system, regardless of the severity of their charges). Although charging youth as adults is often seen as the “tough on crime” approach, research has shown that this practice undermines public safety and reduces the chance that a young person will be able to turn around his or her life.
Weighing opportunity cost
By: Kimbriell Kelly
I have student loan debt that’s been looming for years. Every time I think about it, my heart races and my brain calculates how much overtime I’d have to pull to pay off the debt in a year.
I run to my financial planner and she says the same thing: Pay the debt and your anxiety will go away. But, you will have funneled tens of thousands of dollars into paying off something that won’t make you any money and will prevent you from saving. Instead, she said it would be better to pay the debt in small monthly payments over time and put the extra money into investments that earn more interest than what I pay toward my student loans. Over time, I will have earned far more money than what I paid, while still paying off my loans. It’s what she called an “opportunity cost.”
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CfJJ: Juvenile Justice News 