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DOES IMPRISONMENT ALTER THE LIFE COURSE? EVIDENCE ON CRIME AND EMPLOYMENT FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
Author(s) -
LOEFFLER CHARLES E.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/1745-9125.12000
Subject(s) - imprisonment , recidivism , criminology , unemployment , prison , psychology , life course approach , criminal justice , life imprisonment , social psychology , economics , economic growth
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, I analyze data from a natural experiment in which criminal cases were assigned randomly to judges with sizable sentencing disparities. Using these exogenous sentencing disparities, I produce 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.