Conviction, Incarceration, and Recidivism: Understanding the Revolving Door

134 Pages Posted: 20 Jul 2023 Last revised: 27 Aug 2024

See all articles by John Eric Humphries

John Eric Humphries

Yale University - Department of Economics

Aurelie Ouss

University of Pennsylvania

Kamelia Stavreva

Columbia University

Megan T. Stevenson

University of Virginia School of Law

Winnie van Dijk

Harvard University, Department of Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 12, 2023

Abstract

Noncarceral conviction is a common outcome of criminal court cases: for every individual incarcerated, there are approximately three who are recently convicted but not sentenced to prison or jail. We develop an empirical framework for studying the consequences of noncarceral conviction by extending the binary-treatment judge IV framework to settings with multiple treatments. We outline assumptions under which
widely-used 2SLS regressions recover margin-specific treatment effects, relate these assumptions to models of judge decision-making, and derive an expression that provides intuition about the direction and magnitude of asymptotic bias when they are not met. Under the identifying assumptions, we find that noncarceral conviction (relative to dismissal) leads to a large and long-lasting increase in recidivism for felony defendants in Virginia. In contrast, incarceration relative to noncarceral conviction leads to a short-run reduction in recidivism, consistent with incapacitation. While the identifying assumptions include a strong restriction on judge decision-making, we argue that any bias resulting from its failure is unlikely to change our qualitative conclusions. Lastly, we introduce an alternative empirical strategy, and find that it yields similar estimates. Collectively, these results suggest that noncarceral felony conviction is an important and potentially overlooked driver of recidivism.

Keywords: Conviction, incarceration, recidivism, judge IV, multiple treatments

JEL Classification: K14

Suggested Citation

Humphries, John Eric and Ouss, Aurelie and Stavreva, Kamelia and Stevenson, Megan and van Dijk, Winnie, Conviction, Incarceration, and Recidivism: Understanding the Revolving Door (July 12, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4507597 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4507597

John Eric Humphries

Yale University - Department of Economics ( email )

28 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, CT 06520-8268
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.johnerichumphries.com

Aurelie Ouss

University of Pennsylvania ( email )

Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States

Kamelia Stavreva

Columbia University ( email )

3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
United States

Megan Stevenson (Contact Author)

University of Virginia School of Law ( email )

Winnie Van Dijk

Harvard University, Department of Economics

Cambridge, MA 02138
7736800581 (Phone)

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