Using Michigan Sentencing Guidelines to Estimate Effects of Incarceration and Probation on Reoffending and Employment

在过去的三十年里，美国被监禁的人数急剧增加，这引发了关于监禁对犯罪行为和经济机会的影响的关键问题。关于监狱与缓刑等替代性制裁的影响的实证研究往往缺乏明确的因果解释，因为被判处监禁/监禁与缓刑的罪犯之间的结果差异，即使是同一罪行，也可能是由于这些群体之间预先存在的和无法衡量的差异，这些差异影响了量刑决定和研究结果。 拟议的研究旨在提供合理的因果估计的影响，监禁在监狱相比，监狱或缓刑对累犯和就业使用一对自然实验的基础上在密歇根州的量刑指南。一种设计依赖于法官的随机分配，以比较仅仅由于法官而被分配的不同判决的罪犯。另一种设计利用了从罪犯在两个量刑指南变量上的正式评分方式中出现的不连续性？犯罪历史和罪行严重程度这项分析比较了罪犯的结果与非常相似的分数在任何/两个量刑变量（S），但暴露于显着不同的监禁概率，因为他们是略低于或超过阈值的每个变量。这两种设计都将比较限制在有资格被判处同类刑罚的个人，因此，他们处于监禁和替代性制裁之间的政策边缘。该项目将为刑事司法系统的决策者和行动者提供新的证据，为今后关于拘留与非拘留制裁是否适当的决定提供信息。

The dramatic increase in the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. over the last three decades raises critical questions regarding the effects of incarceration on criminal behavior and economic opportunity. Empirical research on the impact of prison vs. alternative sanctions like probation often lacks a clear causal interpretation because differences in outcomes between offenders sentenced to prison/jail vs. probation, even for the same offense, may be due to pre-existing and unmeasured differences between these groups that affect both the sentencing decision and the outcome under study. The proposed research aims to provide plausibly causal estimates of the effects of incarceration in prison compared to jail or probation on recidivism and employment using a pair of natural experiments based on sentencing guidelines in Michigan. One design relies on the random assignment of judges to compare offenders who are given different sentences due only to the judge to which they were assigned. The other design exploits discontinuities that emerge from the ways that offenders are officially scored on the two sentencing guidelines variables ? criminal history and offense severity. This analysis compares the outcomes of offenders with very similar scores on either/both sentencing variable(s) who are nonetheless exposed to dramatically different probabilities of incarceration because they are slightly under or over threshold values of each variable. Both designs restrict comparisons to individuals who are eligible for the same types of sentences and who are therefore on the policy margin between prison and alternative sanctions. This project will provide new evidence for policy-makers and actors in the criminal justice system that could inform future decisions on the appropriateness of custodial vs. non-custodial sanctions.