IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-724800.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Private Prisons Affect Criminal Sentencing?

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Dippel
  • Michael Poyker

Abstract

Using a newly constructed complete monthly panel of private and public state prisons, we ask whether the presence of private prisons impacts state judges’ sentencing decisions. We employ two identification strategies: a difference-in-differences strategy that compares only court pairs that straddle state borders and an event study using the full data. We find that the opening of a private prison has a small but statistically significant and robust effect on sentence length, while the opening of a public prison does not. The effect is entirely driven by changes in sentencing in the first 2 months after prison openings. The combined evidence appears inconsistent with the hypothesis that private prisons may directly influence judges; instead, a simple salience explanation may be the most plausible.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Dippel & Michael Poyker, 2023. "Do Private Prisons Affect Criminal Sentencing?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(3), pages 511-534.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/724800
    DOI: 10.1086/724800
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/724800
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/724800
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/724800?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Galinato, Gregmar I. & Rohla, Ryne, 2020. "Do privately-owned prisons increase incarceration rates?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    2. Claire S. H. Lim & James M. Snyder Jr. & David Strömberg Jr., 2015. "The Judge, the Politician, and the Press: Newspaper Coverage and Criminal Sentencing across Electoral Systems," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 103-135, October.
    3. Will Dobbie & Jacob Goldin & Crystal S. Yang, 2018. "The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 201-240, February.
    4. Christian Dippel & Michael Poyker, 2019. "How Common are Electoral Cycles in Criminal Sentencing?," NBER Working Papers 25716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2018. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 171-205, July.
    6. Gordon, Sanford C. & Huber, Gregory A., 2007. "The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 2(2), pages 107-138, May.
    7. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2013. "Criminal Recidivism after Prison and Electronic Monitoring," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(1), pages 28-73.
    8. Gregory A. Huber & Sanford C. Gordon, 2004. "Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind when It Runs for Office?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(2), pages 247-263, April.
    9. Jeffrey R. Kling, 2006. "Incarceration Length, Employment, and Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 863-876, June.
    10. Huang, Rocco R., 2008. "Evaluating the real effect of bank branching deregulation: Comparing contiguous counties across US state borders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 678-705, March.
    11. Kessler, Daniel P & Piehl, Anne Morrison, 1998. "The Role of Discretion in the Criminal Justice System," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 256-276, October.
    12. Claire S.H. Lim & Bernardo S. Silveira & James M. Snyder, 2016. "Do Judges’ Characteristics Matter? Ethnicity, Gender, and Partisanship in Texas State Trial Courts," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 18(2), pages 302-357.
    13. repec:oup:alecon:v:18:y:2016:i:2:p:302-357. is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2016. "Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," Working Papers id:11299, eSocialSciences.
    15. Oliver Hart & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997. "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1127-1161.
    16. Arindrajit Dube & T. William Lester & Michael Reich, 2016. "Minimum Wage Shocks, Employment Flows, and Labor Market Frictions," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(3), pages 663-704.
    17. David S. Abrams & Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2012. "Do Judges Vary in Their Treatment of Race?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 347-383.
    18. Anna Aizer & Joseph J. Doyle, 2015. "Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital, and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 759-803.
    19. Thomas J. Holmes, 1998. "The Effect of State Policies on the Location of Manufacturing: Evidence from State Borders," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(4), pages 667-705, August.
    20. Carlos Berdejó & Noam Yuchtman, 2013. "Crime, Punishment, and Politics: An Analysis of Political Cycles in Criminal Sentencing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(3), pages 741-756, July.
    21. David Card & Stefano DellaVigna, 2017. "What do Editors Maximize? Evidence from Four Leading Economics Journals," NBER Working Papers 23282, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Lim, Claire S.H. & Snyder, James M., 2015. "Is more information always better? Party cues and candidate quality in U.S. judicial elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 107-123.
    23. Claire S. H. Lim, 2013. "Preferences and Incentives of Appointed and Elected Public Officials: Evidence from State Trial Court Judges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1360-1397, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marchingiglio, Riccardo & Poyker, Michael, 2019. "The Employment Effects of Gender-Specific Minimum Wage," Working Papers 290, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    2. Anita Mukherjee, 2021. "Impacts of Private Prison Contracting on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 408-438, May.
    3. Christian Dippel & Michael Poyker, 2019. "How Common are Electoral Cycles in Criminal Sentencing?," NBER Working Papers 25716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Weston White & Anita Alves Pena & Stephan Weiler, 2020. "Going private: Are private prisons cost‐saving options for states?," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 1000-1016, September.
    5. Nasreen Nawaz & Omer Saeed, 2022. "An Optimal Crime Control Policy in a Dynamic Setting," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 20(4), pages 827-880, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ash, Elliott & MacLeod, W. Bentley, 2021. "Reducing partisanship in judicial elections can improve judge quality: Evidence from U.S. state supreme courts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    2. Christian Dippel & Michael Poyker, 2019. "How Common are Electoral Cycles in Criminal Sentencing?," NBER Working Papers 25716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2021. "Juvenile Punishment, High School Graduation, and Adult Crime: Evidence from Idiosyncratic Judge Harshness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 34-47, March.
    4. Dippel, Christian & Poyker, Michael, 2021. "Rules versus norms: How formal and informal institutions shape judicial sentencing cycles," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 645-659.
    5. Amartya Bose, 2020. "Racial disparities in law enforcement: The role of in-group bias and electoral pressures," Discussion Papers 2020-11, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    6. Bastien Michel & Camille Hémet, 2022. "Custodial versus non-custodial sentences: Long-run evidence from an anticipated reform," PSE Working Papers halshs-03899897, HAL.
    7. Gregory DeAngelo & Bryan C. McCannon, 2019. "Political competition in judge and prosecutor elections," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 167-193, October.
    8. Briggs Depew & Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2017. "Judges, Juveniles, and In-Group Bias," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(2), pages 209-239.
    9. Christian Dippel & Dustin Frye & Bryan Leonard, 2020. "Property Rights without Transfer Rights: A Study of Indian Land Allotment," NBER Working Papers 27479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Sofia Amaral & Gordon B. Dahl & Victoria Endl-Geyer & Timo Hener & Helmut Rainer, 2023. "Deterrence or Backlash? Arrests and the Dynamics of Domestic Violence," NBER Working Papers 30855, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jenny Williams & Don Weatherburn, 2022. "Can Electronic Monitoring Reduce Reoffending?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(2), pages 232-245, May.
    12. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Priming Ideology: Why Presidential Elections Affect U.S. Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-681, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2016.
    13. Manudeep Bhuller & Gordon B. Dahl & Katrine V. Løken & Magne Mogstad, 2020. "Incarceration, Recidivism, and Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1269-1324.
    14. Kristin F. Butcher & Kyung H. Park & Anne Morrison Piehl, 2017. "Comparing Apples to Oranges: Differences in Women’s and Men’s Incarceration and Sentencing Outcomes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(S1), pages 201-234.
    15. Johannes W. Ligtenberg & Tiemen Woutersen, 2024. "Multidimensional clustering in judge designs," Papers 2406.09473, arXiv.org.
    16. Jon Kleinberg & Himabindu Lakkaraju & Jure Leskovec & Jens Ludwig & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2018. "Human Decisions and Machine Predictions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(1), pages 237-293.
    17. William Arbour & Steeve Marchand, 2022. "Parole, Recidivism, and the Role of Supervised Transition," Working Papers tecipa-725, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    18. Marchingiglio, Riccardo & Poyker, Michael, 2019. "The Employment Effects of Gender-Specific Minimum Wage," Working Papers 290, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    19. Grenet, Julien & Grönqvist, Hans & Niknami, Susan, 2024. "The effects of electronic monitoring on offenders and their families," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    20. Nicolás Grau & Gonzalo Marivil & Jorge Rivera, 2019. "The Effect of Pretrial Detention on Labor Market Outcomes," Working Papers wp488, University of Chile, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H76 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Other Expenditure Categories
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    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:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/724800. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    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.