Heterogeneous Impacts of Sentencing Decisions

We thank Ilan Wolff, Maximiliano Gonzalez, Julien Bendelac, Ryan Lee, and Ora Halpern for excellent research assistance. We owe thanks to many people who gave generously of their time to help us better understand how the Illinois criminal justice system operates and records its activities: Jordan Boulger, Michael Cooney, Jennifer Dohm, Kendy Elberson, Ian Jantz, Alan Mills, Michael Moore, Max Schanzenbach, Jason Sweat, Gwyn Troyer, and Rob Warden. We owe special thanks to Stephen M Brandt, the Director of Legal Research for the Chief Judge, Judge Lawrence P. Fox, Sarah Staudt at the Prison Policy Initiative, and Forest Gregg of the Chicago Data Collaborative. We thank Magne Mogstad, Evan Rose, Azeem Shaikh, seminar participants at Brown Economics, the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Institute for Research on Poverty’s Summer Research Workshop, and Northwestern Law School’s Law and Economics Workshop for useful feedback. We thank The Hymen Milgrom Supporting Organization’s Successful Pathways from School to Work project for support. We thank Robert Goerge and Chapin Hall for supporting our work. We thank the Walton Family Foundation for research support. Any views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.