IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp13035.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Early Release and Recidivism

Author

Listed:
  • Meier, Armando N.

    (University of Lausanne)

  • Levav, Jonathan

    (Stanford University)

  • Meier, Stephan

    (Columbia University)

Abstract

Does early release decrease or increase the probability that ex-convicts will return to prison? We exploit unique data from Israeli courts, where appearance before the judge throughout the day has an arbitrary component. We first show that judges more often deny parole requests of prisoners appearing further from the judges' last break. We then use this variation in instrumental variable estimations and find that early releases reduce the propensity of prisoners to return to prison. Robustness checks suggest that later and earlier cases are largely comparable and that potential selection is unlikely to explain the results.

Suggested Citation

  • Meier, Armando N. & Levav, Jonathan & Meier, Stephan, 2020. "Early Release and Recidivism," IZA Discussion Papers 13035, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp13035.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hainmueller, Jens, 2012. "Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, January.
    2. 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.
    3. Victor A. Ginsburgh & Jan C. van Ours, 2003. "Expert Opinion and Compensation: Evidence from a Musical Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 289-296, March.
    4. Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati & Pietro Vertova, 2009. "The Deterrent Effects of Prison: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(2), pages 257-280, April.
    5. Emily Oster, 2019. "Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 187-204, April.
    6. Anaïs Henneguelle & Benjamin Monnery & Annie Kensey, 2016. "Better at Home than in Prison? The Effects of Electronic Monitoring on Recidivism in France," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 629-667.
    7. Monnery, Benjamin & Wolff, François-Charles & Henneguelle, Anaïs, 2020. "Prison, semi-liberty and recidivism: Bounding causal effects in a survival model," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    8. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    9. Dickinson, David L. & McElroy, Todd, 2017. "Sleep restriction and circadian effects on social decisions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 57-71.
    10. Alessandro Barbarino & Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2014. "The Incapacitation Effect of Incarceration: Evidence from Several Italian Collective Pardons," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 1-37, February.
    11. David Card & Gordon B. Dahl, 2011. "Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 103-143.
    12. Jing Chen & Elizabeth Demers & Baruch Lev, 2018. "Oh What a Beautiful Morning! Diurnal Influences on Executives and Analysts: Evidence from Conference Calls," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(12), pages 5899-5924, December.
    13. Alain Cohn & Jan Engelmann & Ernst Fehr & Michel André Maréchal, 2015. "Evidence for Countercyclical Risk Aversion: An Experiment with Financial Professionals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 860-885, February.
    14. Anthony Heyes & Soodeh Saberian, 2019. "Temperature and Decisions: Evidence from 207,000 Court Cases," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 238-265, April.
    15. Amanda Agan & Sonja Starr, 2017. "The Effect of Criminal Records on Access to Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 560-564, May.
    16. Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati & Francesco Sobbrio, 2020. "The Political Cost of Being Soft on Crime: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(6), pages 3305-3336.
    17. Ilyana Kuziemko, 2013. "How should inmates be released from prison? An assessment of parole versus fixed-sentence regimes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 371-424.
    18. Chen, Daniel L. & Moskowitz, Tobias J. & Shue, Kelly, 2016. "Decision-Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence From Asylum Courts, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," IAST Working Papers 16-43, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    19. 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.
    20. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    21. 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.
    22. Meier, Armando N. & Schmid, Lukas & Stutzer, Alois, 2019. "Rain, emotions and voting for the status quo," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 434-451.
    23. Nolan G. Pope, 2016. "How the Time of Day Affects Productivity: Evidence from School Schedules," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 1-11, March.
    24. Shanker Satyanath & Nico Voigtländer & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2017. "Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 478-526.
    25. Chen, Daniel L. & Philippe, Arnaud, 2018. "Clash of norms: Judicial leniency on defendant birthdays," IAST Working Papers 18-76, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    26. Ejis, 2017. "Table of Contents," European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Bucharest Economic Academy, issue 02, June.
    27. Daniel S. Nagin, 2013. "Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence by a Criminologist for Economists," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 83-105, May.
    28. Daniel L. Chen & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Kelly Shue, 2016. "Decision Making Under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence from Asylum Judges, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(3), pages 1181-1242.
    29. Nadia Campaniello & Theodoros M. Diasakos & Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2017. "Rationalizable Suicides: Evidence from Changes in Inmates’ Expected Length of Sentence," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 388-428.
    30. Gordon Dahl & Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 677-734.
    31. Ejis, 2017. "Table of Contents," European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Bucharest Economic Academy, issue 01, March.
    32. Anaïs Henneguelle & Benjamin Monnery & Annie Kensey, 2016. "Better at Home than in Prison? The Effects of Electronic Monitoring on Recidivism in France," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 629-667.
    33. Rasmus Landersø, 2015. "Does Incarceration Length Affect Labor Market Outcomes?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 205-234.
    34. Andrews,Donald W. K. & Stock,James H. (ed.), 2005. "Identification and Inference for Econometric Models," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521844413, October.
    35. Jonathan Levav & Mark Heitmann & Andreas Herrmann & Sheena S. Iyengar, 2010. "Order in Product Customization Decisions: Evidence from Field Experiments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 274-299, April.
    36. 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.
    37. Stevenson, Megan T. & Doleac, Jennifer, 2019. "Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans," IZA Discussion Papers 12853, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    38. Daniel Randles & Iain Harlow & Michael Inzlicht, 2017. "A pre-registered naturalistic observation of within domain mental fatigue and domain-general depletion of self-control," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-15, September.
    39. Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson & David Pozen, 2009. "Building Criminal Capital behind Bars: Peer Effects in Juvenile Corrections," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 105-147.
    40. Jesse M. Shapiro, 2007. "Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 9(1), pages 1-29.
    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. William Arbour & Steeve Marchand, 2022. "Parole, Recidivism, and the Role of Supervised Transition," Working Papers tecipa-725, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.

    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. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Daniele Terlizzese, 2022. "Leave the Door Open? Prison Conditions and Recidivism," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 200-233, October.
    2. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Daniele Terlizzese, 2021. "Cash: Leave the Door Open? Prison Conditions and Recidivism," EIEF Working Papers Series 2111, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Jun 2021.
    3. 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).
    4. Arbour, William & Lacroix, Guy & Marchand, Steeve, 2021. "Prison Rehabilitation Programs: Efficiency and Targeting," IZA Discussion Papers 14022, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Anaïs Henneguelle & Benjamin Monnery & Annie Kensey, 2016. "Better at Home than in Prison? The Effects of Electronic Monitoring on Recidivism in France," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 629-667.
    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. William Arbour & Steeve Marchand, 2022. "Parole, Recidivism, and the Role of Supervised Transition," Working Papers tecipa-725, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    8. Alain Cohn & Michel André Maréchal & Thomas Noll, 2015. "Bad Boys: How Criminal Identity Salience Affects Rule Violation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(4), pages 1289-1308.
    9. Steeve Marchand & Guy Lacroix & William Arbour, 2023. "Prison rehabilitation programs and recidivism: evidence from variations in availability," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2023n07, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    10. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Daniele Terlizzese, 2014. "Harsh or Human? Detention Conditions and Recidivism," EIEF Working Papers Series 1413, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised May 2018.
    11. Kevin T. Schnepel, 2016. "Economics of Incarceration," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 49(4), pages 515-523, December.
    12. 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.
    13. Roberto Galbiati & Aurélie Ouss & Arnaud Philippe, 2021. "Jobs, News and Reoffending after Incarceration [Examining the generality of the unemployment–crime association]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(633), pages 247-270.
    14. Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati, 2012. "Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 199-218, April.
    15. 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.
    16. Mueller-Smith, Michael & Schnepel, Kevin T., 2016. "Avoiding Convictions: Regression Discontinuity Evidence on Court Deferrals for First-Time Drug Offenders," IZA Discussion Papers 10409, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Santiago Tobón, 2017. "Condiciones de Reclusión y Reincidencia: Evidencia de una expansión de cupos carcelario," Documentos CEDE 15293, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    18. 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.
    19. O’Flaherty, Brendan & Sethi, Rajiv, 2015. "Urban Crime," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1519-1621, Elsevier.
    20. Escobar, Maria A. & Tobón, Santiago & Vanegas-Arias, Martín, 2023. "Production and persistence of criminal skills: Evidence from a high-crime context," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    parole; recidivism; early release; sentence length; judges;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp13035. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.