Jobs, News and Reoffending after Incarceration

Abstract

We study how local labour market conditions and information about job availability affect recidivism after incarceration. We exploit daily variations in the quality of the labour market at the time of release from prison. We combine individual-level administrative data on former inmates in France to county-level daily data on new job vacancies, and on newspaper coverage of job creation and destruction. Our analysis provides two new findings. First, media coverage of job creation reduces recidivism, suggesting that policies promoting access to information about employment opportunities can contribute to reducing recidivism. Second, we show that there is heterogeneity in what kinds of jobs affect recidivism: in France, former inmates do not respond to overall job creation, but better opportunities in manufacturing jobs at release reduce recidivism rates.

The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism

“…The theoretical wage effect is not substantively different from what we might expect from higher market wages or better labor market opportunities, as studied in the recent work of Yang (2017), Galbiati et al (2017), and Schnepel (2018)-all of which show that better local labor market opportunities at the time of release decrease the probability of returning to prison. It is the possibility of a coincident unemployment effect from higher minimum wages that differentiates any predicted effects, and ensuing empirical content, of this question from this recent literature.…”

“…Every year, more than 600,000 men and women are released from U.S. prisons; nearly onethird will return to prison within three years (Yang 2017). The probability these individuals return to prison is in part determined by the labor market opportunities they face upon release (Raphael and Weiman 2007;Visher et al 2008;Yang 2017;Galbiati et al 2017;Schnepel 2018). Recently released prisoners tend to have lower human capital and interrupted work histories (Waldfogel 1994;Pager 2008); they also carry the stigma of a criminal conviction and the associated risks to potential employers (Pager 2003;Agan and Starr 2018).…”

The price of expungements

“…Recent empirical research has shown considerable support for this claim. For example, recidivism is affected by the availability of jobs for re-entering offenders (Galbiati et al [2017]; Yang [2017]; Schnepel [2018]), the length of time that a former felon spends searching for a job (Engelhardt [2010]), the experience of incarceration in the life cycle (Apel and Sweeten [2010]; Western [2002]) and the amount of education that an individual has received (Lochner and Moretti [2004]).…”

Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime?

“…2 Minimum wage increases could also affect crime through their human capital effects, including impacts on school enrollment (Neumark and Wascher 2003;Pacheco and Cruickshank 2007) and on-the-job training (Neumark and Wascher 2001;Acemoglu and Pischke 2003). Additionally, they may also affect crime via their impacts on expected labor market opportunities, conditional on actual opportunities (Galbiati et al 2017).…”