Current Research Projects

Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is highly prevalent amongst criminal justice populations: ADHD diagnoses and medication are upwards of five times more likely for individuals who have a Swedish prison record than those without. We merge Swedish prison registers (with detailed healthcare data) to out-of-prison healthcare, crime, and employment data to study the effect of in-prison ADHD diagnoses. For individuals with no ADHD history, this new diagnosis treatment can include an information shock, medication and/or therapy. We compare the pre- and post-prison dynamics for treated inmates to alternative undiagnosed comparison groups: all untreated individuals, untreated early spells for repeat offenders treated in later spells, or a matched and reweighted control group. A robust set of findings emerge. New in-prison ADHD diagnoses significantly and persistently increase post-prison ADHD and substance abuse related healthcare. Crime and labor market outcomes, however, do not improve. There are also significant family spill-over effects: both children and siblings with no previous history of ADHD are more likely to be treated for ADHD after a newly diagnosed family member’s prison spell. Though prison appears to serve as an institution to bring high-risk, vulnerable populations into the public healthcare system, our results suggest that ADHD related care may not be as effective at lowering crime as many policy makers argue.

We examine the effects of a criminal record on labor market outcomes and the mediating role of job sorting using Swedish register data. Prime-age adults with criminal records earn about 30% less than observably similar adults without records and are concentrated in specific employers, largely within industries. To estimate the causal effect of a criminal record, we use an event study design that compares outcomes for adults charged with an offense for the first time to matched adults who were suspected of a similar offense but not charged. Acquiring a criminal record reduces annual earnings by 5%. These negative effects are larger for more serious charges and not driven by job displacement or incapacitation. Using a record registry reform, we show that when charges are omitted from records, the same design yields no detectable effects. We classify firms by their propensity to hire workers with criminal records, holding suspected offense history fixed. A criminal record reduces employment at firms classified as less likely to hire workers with criminal records, increases employment at other firms, and decreases monthly earnings within firms. Firm propensity to hire workers with criminal records varies substantially, including within industry, and is linked to firm size and managers’ prior exposure to people with records. Leveraging manager moves across small firms, we find that when a firm hires a new manager with greater prior exposure to people with criminal records, it hires more people with records, with no detectable effect on productivity.

We use a reform that increased the time served in prison from one-half to two-thirds of a sentence to study the causal effect of neighborhood incarceration rates on the contemporaneous criminal behavior of non-incarcerated neighborhood male peers. Higher neighborhood incarceration rates have small, but significant, crime reducing spill-over effects. These crime reductions are seen for both serious and non-serious crimes and across neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic characteristics. Within the neighborhood, the effects are driven by males with a criminal history (especially co-offending histories) who are 25 or older. In contrast, crime rates for young men with no criminal history actually increase when neighborhoods are exposed to the reform. We demonstrate that the crime reducing neighborhood spillover effects of the reform are not just generated by those directly linked to individuals in prison, but also by  non-linked neighborhood members solely affected by changes in the local neighborhood environment.

We study spillover effects within criminal networks by leveraging the deaths of co-offenders as a source of causal identification. We find that the death of a co-offender significantly reduces the criminal activities of other network members. These spillover effects display a decaying pattern: offenders directly linked to a deceased co-offender experience the most significant impact, followed by those two steps away, and then those three steps away. Moreover, we find that the death of a more central co-offender leads to a larger reduction in aggregate crime, underlining the importance of network position in shaping spillover effects. We also provide evidence suggesting that the loss of a co-offender shrinks the future information set of offenders, which can influence their perceived probability of being convicted and consequently their criminal behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of accounting for spillover effects in designing more effective strategies for crime prevention.