Do Private Prisons Affect Criminal Sentencing? / Christian Dippel, Michael Poyker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dippel, Christian.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Poyker, Michael.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25715.

NBER working paper series no. w25715

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Using a newly constructed complete monthly panel of private and public state prisons, we ask whether private prisons impact judges' sentencing decisions in their state. We employ two identification strategies, a difference-in-difference strategy comparing court-pairs that straddle state-borders, and an event study. We find that the opening of private prisons has a large effect on sentence lengths shortly after opening but this effect dissipates once the prison is at capacity. Public prison openings have no such effects, suggesting that private prisons have an impact on criminal sentencing that public ones do not.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2019.