IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v13y2011i1p103-130.html

Prison Conditions and Recidivism

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Drago
  • Roberto Galbiati
  • Pietro Vertova

Abstract

The authors examine the impact of prison conditions on future criminal behavior. The take over is based on a unique dataset on the post-release behavior of about twenty thousand Italian former prison inmates. The authors use variation in prison assignment as a means of identifying the effects of prison overcrowding, deaths in prison, and degree of isolation on the probability of reoffending. They do not find compellingevidence of (specific) deterrent effects of experienced prison severity. The measures of prison severity do not reduce the probability of recidivism. Instead, all point estimates suggest that harsh prison conditions increase post-release criminal activity, though they are not always precisely estimated. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati & Pietro Vertova, 2011. "Prison Conditions and Recidivism," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 13(1), pages 103-130.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:13:y:2011:i:1:p:103-130
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahq024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:13:y:2011:i:1:p:103-130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.