IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32282.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

“Something Works” in U.S. Jails: Misconduct and Recidivism Effects of the IGNITE Program

Author

Listed:
  • Marcella Alsan
  • Arkey M. Barnett
  • Peter Hull
  • Crystal Yang

Abstract

A longstanding and influential view in U.S. correctional policy is that “nothing works” when it comes to rehabilitating incarcerated individuals. We revisit this hypothesis by studying an innovative law-enforcement-led program launched in the county jail of Flint, Michigan: Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education (IGNITE). We develop an instrumental variable approach to estimate the effects of IGNITE exposure, which leverages quasi-random court delays that cause individuals to spend more time in jail both before and after the program’s launch. Holding time in jail fixed, we find that one additional month of IGNITE exposure reduces weekly misconduct within jail and three-month recidivism by 25% and 24%, respectively, with the recidivism effects growing over time. Surveys of staff and community members, along with administrative test score records and within-jail text messages, suggest that cultural change and improved literacy and numeracy scores as contributing mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcella Alsan & Arkey M. Barnett & Peter Hull & Crystal Yang, 2024. "“Something Works” in U.S. Jails: Misconduct and Recidivism Effects of the IGNITE Program," NBER Working Papers 32282, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32282
    Note: ED LE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32282.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

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

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C26 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior

    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:nbr:nberwo:32282. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.