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DOES IMPRISONMENT ALTER THE LIFE COURSE? EVIDENCE ON CRIME AND EMPLOYMENT FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“Incarceration can impact the life-course and the transition to adulthood in many negative ways (Huebner, 2005; Loeffler, 2013).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- LOEFFLER, C. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- LOEFFLER, CHARLES E.
- ORCID
- LOEFFLER, CHARLES E.
- Venue
- Criminology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-01-24
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 137-166
- ISSN
- 0011-1384 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-9125
- OpenAlex
- W2167969514
- Cited by
- 181
- References
- 92
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 5
- FWCI
- 32.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Criminology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
- Keywords
- incarceration, recidivism, post-release employment, unemployment, selection effects, sentencing disparities, judges, life course, criminogenic effects, stigmatization
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