The impacts of incarceration on crime David Roodman1 Open Philanthropy Project September 2017 1 I thank Holden Karnofsky for guidance and support, Mark Schaffer for advice on applying the Anderson-Rubin test; Tim Carr for generous assistance with data from Georgia; Peter Ganong, Steven Levitt, and Thomas Marvell for sharing data; Ilyana Kuziemko for sharing code and arranging access to data; Donald Green and Alex Tabarrok for sharing or posting data and code; and David Abrams, John Berecochea, Paolo Buonanno, Chloe Cockburn, Gordon Dahl, Rafael Di Tella, Joseph Doyle, Peter Ganong, Donald Green, Randi Hjalmarsson, Ilyana Kuziemko, Gerry Gaes, Karalyn Lacey, Edward Miguel, Michael Mueller-Smith, Daniel Nagin, Emily Owens, Steven Raphael, Max Schanzenbach, Alex Tabarrok, Ben Vollaard, David Weisburd, and Crystal Yang for reviewing full or partial drafts. Thanks also to my GiveWell colleagues for valua- ble feedback. All views expressed are attributable to me alone. Contents 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. 5 2. Conceptual preliminaries ......................................................................................................................................... 9 2.1. Swiftness, certainty, and severity ................................................................................................................... 9 2.2. Causal channels from incarceration to crime ........................................................................................... 10 2.2.1. Before incarceration: deterrence ........................................................................................................ 10 2.2.2. During incarceration: incapacitation ................................................................................................. 10 2.2.3. Aftereffects ........................................................................................................................................... 10 2.3. On measuring crime .................................................................................................................................... 11 2.4. Five confounders ......................................................................................................................................... 11 2.4.1. Aging ...................................................................................................................................................... 11 2.4.2. Replacement ......................................................................................................................................... 13 2.4.3. Illicit industry destabilization ............................................................................................................. 14 2.4.4. Cognitive framing ................................................................................................................................ 14 2.4.5. The parole effect .................................................................................................................................. 16 3. Process .................................................................................................................................................................... 18 3.1. Searching ....................................................................................................................................................... 18 3.2. Filtering .......................................................................................................................................................... 18 3.3. Reanalyzing ................................................................................................................................................... 20 4. Summary of reviews .............................................................................................................................................. 22 5. Deterrence: Swiftness and certainty ................................................................................................................... 27 5.1. Weisburd, Einat, and Kowalski (2008), “The miracle of the cells: An experimental study of interventions to increase payment of court-ordered financial obligations,” Criminology & Public Policy . 27 5.2. HOPE ............................................................................................................................................................ 28 5.2.1. Hawken and Kleiman (2009), “Managing drug involved probationers with swift and certain sanctions: Evaluating Hawaii’s HOPE”; Hawken et al. (2016), “HOPE II: A follow-up to Hawaiʻi’s HOPE evaluation” ................................................................................................................................................ 28 5.2.2. Lattimore et al. (2016), “Outcome findings from the HOPE demonstration field experiment: Is swift, certain, and fair an effective supervision strategy?”, Criminology & Public Policy; O’Connell, Brent, and Visher (2016), “Decide Your Time: A randomized trial of a drug testing and graduated sanctions program for probationers,” Criminology & Public Policy ............................................................ 30 5.3. Summary: Swiftness and certainty ............................................................................................................. 33 6. Deterrence: Severity .............................................................................................................................................. 33 6.1. Ross (1982), Deterring the Drinking Driver ............................................................................................ 33 6.2. Drago, Galbiati, and Vertova (2009), “The Deterrent Effects of Prison: Evidence from a Natural Experiment,” Journal of Political Economy ......................................................................................................... 35 6.3. Two studies of “Three Strikes” .................................................................................................................. 36 6.3.1. Helland and Tabarrok (2007), “Does Three Strikes deter? A nonparametric estimation,” Journal of Human Resources .............................................................................................................................. 37 6.3.2. Iyengar (2008), “I’d rather be hanged for a sheep than a lamb: The unintended consequences of ‘three-strikes’ laws,” NBER working paper ................................................................................................. 41 6.4. Abrams (2012), “Estimating the deterrent effect of incarceration using sentencing enhancements,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics .............................................................................................. 42 6.5. Summary: Severity ........................................................................................................................................ 48 7. Incarceration versus highly supervised release: incapacitation and aftereffects ........................................... 48 7.1. Deschenes, Turner, and Petersilia (1995), “A dual experiment in intensive community supervision: Minnesota’s prison diversion and enhanced supervised release programs,” Prison Journal ......................... 48 7.2. Di Tella and Schargrodsky (2013), “Criminal recidivism after prison and electronic monitoring,” Journal of Political Economy .................................................................................................................................. 49 7.3. Summary: Incarceration versus highly supervised release ...................................................................... 51 8. Incapacitation......................................................................................................................................................... 51 8.1. Levitt (1996), “The effect of prison population size on crime rates: Evidence from prison overcrowding litigation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics ................................................................................ 51 8.2. Owens (2009), “More time, less crime? Estimating the incapacitative effect of sentence enhancements,” Journal of Law and Economics ................................................................................................. 60 8.3. Buonanno and Raphael (2013), “Incarceration and incapacitation: Evidence from the 2006 Italian collective pardon,” American Economic Review ................................................................................................ 61 8.4. Vollaard (2013), “Preventing crime through selective incapacitation,” Economic Journal .............. 64 8.5. Lofstrom and Raphael (2016), “Incarceration and crime: Evidence from California’s public safety realignment reform,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science .............................. 67 8.6. Summary: Incapacitation versus standard release ................................................................................... 77 9. Aftereffects ............................................................................................................................................................. 78 9.1. Berecochea, Jaman, and Jones (1973), “Time served in prison and parole outcome: An experimental study: Report number 1”; Berecochea and Jaman (1981), “Time served