Abstract
We develop a model of a Parole Board contemplating whether to grant parole release to a prisoner who has finished serving their minimum sentence. The model implies a simple outcome test for racial prejudice robust to the inframarginality problem. Our test involves running simple regressions of whether a prisoner recidivates on the exposure time to the risk of recidivism and its square, using only the sample of prisoners who are granted parole release strictly between their minimum and maximum sentences and separately by race. If the coefficient estimates on the exposure time term differ by race, then there is evidence of racial prejudice against the racial group with the smaller coefficient estimate. We implement our test for prejudice using data from Pennsylvania from January 1996 to December 31, 2001. Although we find racial differences in time served, we find no evidence for racial prejudice on the part of the Parole Board based on our outcome test.
Highlights
It has been widely documented that blacks comprise a disproportionate share of the U.S prison population
Using data from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections on all individuals who were released from prison on or after January 1, 1996 and whose maximum sentence ended by December 31, 2001, we find our model is consistent with the data if and only if we define recidivism as returning to prison due to committing a violent or sex crime
In this paper we develop a model of a Parole Board who is contemplating whether to grant parole to a prisoner who has finished serving their minimum sentence
Summary
It has been widely documented that blacks comprise a disproportionate share of the U.S prison population. We deal with the infra-marginality problem in this paper by noting that in our model, every prisoner released by the Parole Board between their minimum and maximum sentence, regardless of their characteristics, will have a recidivism rate exactly equal to the threshold set by the Parole Board. Using data from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections on all individuals who were released from prison on or after January 1, 1996 and whose maximum sentence ended by December 31, 2001, we find our model is consistent with the data if and only if we define recidivism as returning to prison due to committing a violent or sex crime Using this definition of recidivism, we find no evidence that the Parole Board is racially prejudiced in its discretionary parole release decisions.
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