Prison population growth and crime reduction

Violent Crime in the United States of America: A Time-Series Analysis Between 1960–2000

“…4 Using a state-level approach, however, Levitt (1996) found that for the offences of homicide and robbery, elasticities were approximately ten times and four times smaller respectively than those reported in the national-level studies. 5 Similar conclusions regarding the magnitude of the prison elasticity arise from an earlier state-level study by Marvell and Moody (1994). Although their estimates are less than one half of those of Levitt's (1996), their findings suggest that the prison elasticities reported in the existing national-level studies might be implausibly large.…”

Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature

“…Studies of the crime-prison population elasticity generally utilize state-level panel data and regress the growth rate in crime on the first lag of the growth rate in a state's share of prisoners. Marvell and Moody (1994) provide the first credible empirical investigation of the elasticity of crime with respect to prison populations, estimating an elasticity of −0.16. As in their police paper, they use the concept of Granger causality in an attempt to rule out a causal relationship that runs from crime to prison populations.…”

First-day criminal recidivism

“…There is an important body of literature that tries to isolate pure incapacitation effects. Marvell and Moody (1994) use inmate interviews on criminal activity prior to arrest to calculate the offenses that inmates would have committed had they not been incarcerated and report a crime-prison elasticity of -0.16. Levitt (1996) and 40 percent within two years.…”