McCold, Paul E., "A Numerical Sensitivity Analysis of Process Delay in the Incarceration of Juvenile Offenders", 1990
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The analysis unit of the New York State Division for Youth is responsible for providing admission forecasts to allow the Division to anticipate changes in demands for facility space. Arrests of the most serious offenders had shown a 38% growth between 1987 and 1988, yet the annual admission rate declined 19%. In an effort to understand the reasons and account for this difference, a Stella model of the offender processing system was created and simulated using historical exogenous time serious inputs. Utilizing linear processing ratios and simple causal assumptions, the model reproduced the historical admission rates without any changes in processing trends. The results indicate that the admission rate was proportional to the arrest rate, given the long lag time involved in the conviction process. Further, the growth in cases backlogged due to an increase in processing time during 1987 did not imply that a small increase in processing resources would cause a surge of admissions.