Truth-in-Sentencing, Incentives and Recidivism Forthcoming at 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 Conditionally Accepted 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 many romantic relationships begin at work, intimate relationships between managers and subordinates have increasingly come under scrutiny. We use administrative data covering the universe of cohabiting couples in Finland from 1988-2016 to explore the career implications of dating and breaking up with one's manager and spillovers on the wider workforce. Using a difference-in-difference across-couples research design we find that those in relationships with their managers experience a 9% bump in their earnings compared to those in relationships with managers in different firms. Relationships between managers and subordinates last longer and both manager and subordinate are more likely to remain in the same firm. However, when a manager and subordinate break up, the subordinate is 10 percentage points more likely to drop out of employment. Last, we examine the spillovers of these relationships on the broader workforce and document a 4 percentage point decrease in retention of other workers from these relationships. This result suggests these relationships impose costs on colleagues, including but not limited to exit from the firm.
Media: Financial Times, Weekendavisen
Post-Release Supervision, Returns to Prison and New Convictions w/ Abigail Banan
Supervision of offenders released from prison is a large and growing component of the criminal justice system in the United States. The paper explores the impact supervision has on successful prisoner reentry. I show the introduction of post-release supervision in North Carolina resulted in a 250% increase in returns to prison. This increase is due to 30% of those supervised receiving a release revocation. By 3 years post-release, supervised offenders are still returned to prison 36% more often. This indicates that many who were returned to prison due to a revocation, may not have in the absence of supervision. I further show that supervised offenders were 4 percentage points less likely to have obtained a new conviction 2 years after release, and this gap grows to 6.5 percentage points 5 years after release. This indicates that incapacitation due to release revocations can not fully explain the reduction in convictions.
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
The Impact of Administrative Segregation on Offender Outcomes in Prison and After Release w/ Martti Kaila
Comprehensive Pre-Prison Release Planning for High Risk Offenders w/ William Arbour and Jeffery Hicks