NCJ Number
245286
Journal
Criminology Volume: 51 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2013 Pages: 137-166
Date Published
February 2013
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This study examined the criminal sentencing process and its effect on recidivism.
Abstract
Ex-prisoners consistently manifest high rates of criminal recidivism and unemployment. Existing explanations for these poor outcomes emphasize the stigmatizing effects of imprisonment on prisoners seeking postrelease employment as well as the deleterious effects of imprisonment on prisoners' attitudes and capabilities. However, these explanations must be distinguished from selection effects in the criminal sentencing process, which also could explain some or all of these poor outcomes. To distinguish between criminogenic and selection explanations for ex-prisoners' postrelease experience the author analyzed data from a natural experiment in which criminal cases were assigned randomly to judges with sizable sentencing disparities. Using these exogenous sentencing disparities, the author produced unbiased estimates of the causal effects of imprisonment on the life course. The results of this analysis suggest that selection effects could be sufficiently large to account for prisoners' poor postrelease outcomes because judges with large sentencing disparities in their use of imprisonment had similarly high caseload unemployment and criminal recidivism rates. (Published Abstract)