The Political Cost of Being Soft on Crime: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

54 Pages Posted: 10 Jul 2017 Last revised: 26 Apr 2023

See all articles by Francesco Drago

Francesco Drago

University of Messina, CSEF & CEPR

Roberto Galbiati

Department of Economics, Sciences Po-CNRS

Francesco Sobbrio

University of Rome Tor Vergata - Department of Economics and Finance; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Multiple version iconThere are 5 versions of this paper

Abstract

We provide evidence about voters' response to crime control policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon releasing about one third of the prison population. The pardon created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and municipalities. We show that municipalities where resident pardoned individuals have a higher incentive to recidivate experienced higher recidivism.Moreover, in these municipalities: i) newspapers were more likely to report crime news involving pardoned individuals; ii) voters held worse beliefs on the incumbent governments ability to control crime and iii) with respect to the previous elections, the incumbent national government experienced a worse electoral performance in the April 2008 national elections relative to the opposition coalition. Overall, our findings indicate that voters keep incumbent politicians accountable by conditioning their vote on the observed effects of their policies.

Keywords: recidivism, crime, natural experiment, voting, accountability

JEL Classification: D72, K42

Suggested Citation

Drago, Francesco and Galbiati, Roberto and Sobbrio, Francesco, The Political Cost of Being Soft on Crime: Evidence from a Natural Experiment. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10858, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2998967 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2998967

Francesco Drago (Contact Author)

University of Messina, CSEF & CEPR ( email )

Piazza Pugliatti 1
Messina
Italy

Roberto Galbiati

Department of Economics, Sciences Po-CNRS ( email )

28 rue des saints peres
Paris, 75007
France

Francesco Sobbrio

University of Rome Tor Vergata - Department of Economics and Finance ( email )

Via columbia 2
Rome, Rome 00123
Italy

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
18
Abstract Views
405
PlumX Metrics