NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Prison Crowding, Recidivism, and Early Release in Early Rhode Island

Howard Bodenhorn

NBER Working Paper No. 20837
Issued in January 2015
NBER Program(s):   DAE

Prison overcrowding is a perennial problem and several states are under court order to reduce crowding. The long-term solution to crowding has been more prisons. The short-term solution is early release. Early release programs can be effective when they balance the savings of reduced prison costs against the costs of recidivism by released convicts. This paper uses historical data to investigate how prison officials altered their early release policies in the face of prison crowding and rising real per prisoner detention costs. The empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prison officials make use of information about the risks of recidivism revealed at trial and during incarceration to make informed decisions about whom to release and when.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Access to NBER Papers

You are eligible for a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, an employee of the U.S. federal government with a ".GOV" domain name, or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy.

If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access.

E-mail:

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w20837

Published: Bodenhorn, Howard, 2016. "Prison crowding, recidivism, and early release in early Rhode Island," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 55-74. citation courtesy of

Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:
Piazzesi, Schneider, and Stroebel w20823 Segmented Housing Search
Angrist, Autor, Hudson, and Pallais w20800 Leveling Up: Early Results from a Randomized Evaluation of Post-Secondary Aid
Bénétrix, Lane, and Shambaugh w20820 International Currency Exposures, Valuation Effects, and the Global Financial Crisis
Autor, Maestas, Mullen, and Strand w20840 Does Delay Cause Decay? The Effect of Administrative Decision Time on the Labor Force Participation and Earnings of Disability Applicants
Grossman and Rockoff w20832 Fighting the Last War: Economists on the Lender of Last Resort
 
Publications
Activities
Meetings
NBER Videos
Themes
Data
People
About

National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; 617-868-3900; email: info@nber.org

Contact Us