Leave the Door Open? Prison Conditions and Recidivism

We estimate the effect on recidivism of replacing time served in a common closed-cell prison with time served in an open-cell one. We deal with the endogenous assignment of inmates to different prison regimes using variation that is driven by nearby prisons’ overcrowding. Switching regimes for a yea...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:American economic journal. Applied economics 2022-10, Vol.14 (4), p.200-233
Main Authors: Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, Terlizzese, Daniele
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We estimate the effect on recidivism of replacing time served in a common closed-cell prison with time served in an open-cell one. We deal with the endogenous assignment of inmates to different prison regimes using variation that is driven by nearby prisons’ overcrowding. Switching regimes for a year reduces recidivism by around 6 percentage points. The effects are largest for inmates with low levels of education and are weak for violent and hardened criminals. (JEL K14, K42)
ISSN:1945-7782
1945-7790
DOI:10.1257/app.20190038