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Abstract: Although there is debate about whether juvenile incarceration deters future crime, this is a common practice worldwide. We contribute to this debate by assessing the causal impact of juvenile incarceration on recidivism as young adults, at the age of 18-21 years old. To address the endogeneity issues, we use the random assignment of public attorneys in the case of Chile as an instrumental variable for juvenile incarceration. We find that full time incarceration increases the probability of recidivism in 26 percentage points and when we define the treatment as full or night incarceration, this probability increases in 30 percentage points. We also find that -- full time and night -- incarceration decreases the probability of high school graduation. Considering these results, our paper raises more doubts about the appropriateness of this policy.