The Social Costs of Incarceration

Rates of imprisonment have been sharply rising in recent years in many developed countries, including Norway. The usual arguments for sending criminals to prison are incapacitation, punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. While these are clearly important issues, an often neglected aspect is the collateral consequences of incarceration on a prisoner's partner, children, and peer networks. This project have given us new insights to the social costs of incarceration. The most challenging problem in estimating the spillover effects of incarceration is that criminal activity is not random. Individuals who commit crime, as well as their families and neighborhoods, differ from non-criminals in important observable and unobservable ways. The key to our research projects is that the criminal justice system in Norway randomly assigns judges to defendants in most cases. We find that certain judges are systematically stricter than others. While the strictest judge in our sample incarcerate 58 % of individuals, the least strict judge incarcerates 34 % of individuals. The first project is forthcoming in Journal of Political Economy (one of the flagship journals in economics) in April 2020 and can also be found in the working paper: Incarceration, Recidivism and Employment (NBER Working paper 22648). Five year after the decision in court, we find that those incarcerated because they were assigned a strict judge have a probability of re-offending of 48 % while those not incarcerated (probation or community service as main alternatives) because they met a lenient judge have a probability of re-offending of 75 %. The difference is bigger for those not being employed prior to the decision. In addition, those not being employed prior to the decision is also more likely to participate in job market training and are more likely to have a job five years after the decision in court. Rehabilitation programs in prison can there be very important to explain outcomes after imprisonment. Norway is a role model in their programs for rehabilitation in and after imprisonment. Our results suggests that other countries should increase their resources in rehabilitation programs in prisons. The increased costs is outweighed by a large increase in the benefit for the society of reduced recidivism. The second project, Intergenerational Effects of Incarceration is published in AEA: Papers and Proceedings, 2018, 108, pp. 234-240 and use the same variation in probability of incarceration depending on strictness of judges as in the first project. In this project we studied only fathers and compared children with a father in prison (because they saw a strict judge) to children of fathers who did not go to prison (because they saw a less strict judge). A father in prison can be negative for the child because of the trauma, increased stigma and potential financial burden for the family left behind. But it could also deter the child from following in the fathers footsteps and if the father is not a good role model it could be better for the child if he is not around. In our study we do not find evidence for either the negative or positive channels. There is no effect on probability of charges or school achievements in the years after the father went to prison. The last project is available in the working paper: Incarceration spillovers in criminal and family networks (NBER Working paper 24878). We study the spillover effects on brothers and the criminal network using the same instrument for incarceration of the brother or a member of the network as in previous papers. We find a large spillover effect from the older to the younger brother. If the older brother is incarcerated, the younger brother is much less likely to be charged in the years after. We do not observe this if it is the younger brother that is incarcerated. For the criminal network (defined as having been charged together in a previous case and living in the same municipality), we also see large reductions in probability of charged if someone in the network is incarcerated.

PI brukte erfaringene og de første resultatene fra dette prosjektet til å skrive en (vellykket) søknad til ERC Starting Grant. Manudeep Bhuller, som startet som postdoc på prosjektet, er nå ansatt som førsteamanuensis ved UiO. Det er det første prosjektet som har koblet data fra domstolene med data fra politidirektoratet og ssb. Gjennom det pågående ERC-prosjektet har vi nå fått koblet på flere unge forskere i Norge. Vi har søkt og fått tilslag på å forske og utvikle databasen videre for nye fem år. Prosjektet er presentert for kriminalomsorgen, friomsorgen, domstolene og politidirektoratet i Norge og har blitt godt mottatt som et viktig bidrag i jobben med rehabilitering i norske fengsler. Prosjektet har også resultert i flere internasjonale rapporter. Prosjektet er også presentert ved utallige fag-konferanser. En publikasjon i Journal of Political Economy henger veldig høyt i faget og kun et fåtall økonomer i Norge har klart dette tidligere.

Rates of imprisonment have been sharply rising in recent years in many developed countries,including Norway. The usual arguments for sending criminals to prison are incapacitation, punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. While these are clearly important issues, an often neglected aspect is the collateral consequences of incarceration on a prisoner's partner, children, and peer networks. This project aims at giving new insights to the social costs of incarceration. The most challenging problem in estimating the spillover effects of incarceration is that criminal activity is not random. Individuals who commit crime, as well as their families and neighborhoods, differ from non-criminals in important observable and unobservable ways. The key to our proposed research projects is that the criminal justice system in Norway randomly assigns judges to defendants in most cases. It has been documented in several settings that certain judges are systematically stricter than others. This variation in judge strictness will lead to random variation in the probability a suspected criminal will be incarcerated. Using the variation in imprisonment that is generated from the random assignment to judges, we will answer a series of important questions related to the costs and benefits of incarceration. Specifically, we will carry out four separate projects dealing with: (1) the effect of incarceration on a criminal's recidivism, labor market outcomes, and health after release, (2) the immediate and long-term spillover effects of prison time on child development, family structure, and family physical and financial well-being, (3) the transmission of criminal behavior from parent to child, and (4) the influence of co-offender, workplace, family and neighborhood peers on the proliferation of crime.