Truth-in-Sentencing, Incentives and Recidivism Forthcoming at The Review of Economics and Statistics
Parole was eliminated for many US offenders by Truth-in-Sentencing (TIS) laws in the 1990s. I exploit the introduction of TIS in Arizona to explore its impact on offenders before, during, and after incarceration. TIS Offenders were assigned significantly shorter sentences, largely eliminating the intended increase in punishment. These offenders reduced their rehabilitative effort while incarcerated, with rule infractions increasing by 22% and education enrollment falling by 24%. Finally, TIS offenders became 23% more likely to return to prison for a new conviction. I argue these effects were driven by TIS removing parole incentives, given that time served remained largely unchanged.
Media: Probable Causation podcast, Route Fifty
Punishing Financial Crimes: The Impact of Prison on Defendants and Their Colleagues w/ Kristiina Huttunen, Martti Kaila and Emily Nix Forthcoming at AEJ: Economic Policy
Financial crimes are costly to society but less severely punished than nonviolent crimes. We investigate whether prison sentences reduce financial crimes. Using random assignment of judges in Finland to identify causal impacts, we show that a prison sentence reduces defendant reoffending by 42.9 percentage points the three years post-sentencing. Given prior evidence of "contagion" of financial misconduct, we also explore spillovers on colleagues. A prison sentence reduces the likelihood that a financial crime defendant's colleagues commit financial crimes by 27 percentage points, suggesting broader deterrent effects of harsher punishments. Last, we show that financial crimes are not victimless crimes.
Dating and Breaking Up with the Boss: Benefits, Costs, and Spillovers w/ Jerry Motonen & Emily Nix Submitted
While romantic relationships between coworkers are common, intimate relationships between managers and subordinates have increasingly come under scrutiny. This article uses administrative data covering the universe of cohabiting couples in Finland to explore the career implications of dating and breaking up with a manager and the spillovers of these relationships on the broader workforce. Using an event study design, we find that starting a relationship with a manager leads to a 7% increase in earnings. When a manager and subordinate break up, the subordinate's earnings abruptly fall by 18%. Last, we examine the spillovers of these relationships on the broader workforce. We document a 6 percentage point decrease in retention of other workers from these relationships, with larger effects for smaller establishments and establishments where the subordinate had larger earnings gains. We conclude that these relationships impose negative externalities on colleagues, including but not limited to exit from the firm.
Media: Financial Times, Weekendavisen
The Missing Middle: The Disparate Impact of Post-Release Supervision on Returns to Prison and Reconviction w/ Abigail Banan
In 2011, North Carolina expanded post-release supervision to 80% of felony releases that previously went unsupervised. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that 25% of those newly supervised were returned to prison via revocation. This nearly doubled the reincarceration rate one year after release, which remained 3% higher after three years. These revocation effects were racially disparate: Black supervisees were 40% more likely to be revoked, resulting in 55% more days incarcerated 3 years after initial release. Black supervisees experienced a short-term decline in the new felony conviction rate, consistent with incapacitation. Conversely, the felony conviction rate decreased after 12 months for White supervisees, who were 22% less likely to have a felony reconviction after 3 years. This was offset by a steady increase in the new misdemeanor rate, yielding no net change in the overall reconviction rate. Evidence suggests these effects may have been the result of the discretionary downgrading of new charges for White supervisees.
Can’t Take The HEAT?: Local Crime Effects of Homeless Shelters
I explore a temporary cold-weather homeless shelter program in Vancouver, BC, Canada in operation during the winters of 2008 through 2013. Constraints faced in setting up these shelters created plausible exogenous variation in shelter location choice within targeted neighbourhoods. Using data on reported property crimes collected by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD), I am able to exploit this variation. These data include the month, year, and precise location for each incidence of 6 different types of property crime. Using the fineness of the geography in the data, coupled with the exogenous variation in shelter location choice, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the causal effect of these shelters on crime. We find that in the month a shelter opens there is no increase in reported crime on the block a shelter is located and in latter months there is a 120% increase in crime. There is little evidence these impacts extend beyond a shelter’s immediate block.
The Impacts of Fines on Criminal Reoffending of Low Income Defendants w/ Martti Kaila and Emily Nix