Do Welfare Drug Offender Bans Affect Recidivism?

福利毒品罪犯禁令会影响累犯吗？

• 批准号: 1555698
• 负责人: Naomi Sugie
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2020-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1555698&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Do; Welfare; Drug; Offender; Bans

The interrelationships between welfare and criminal justice systems have long been studied; however, their connections for structuring key outcomes among individuals, such as offending, have been rarely explored. This project tests whether government policies of agencies outside of criminal justice are consequential for shaping law-breaking behavior. To do so, it focuses on a potentially salient but often-overlooked welfare policy that may have critical consequences for criminal behavior. Specifically, the 1996 welfare reform policies included a provision to exclude individuals convicted of drug-related felonies from receiving cash assistance and food stamps for their lifetimes (Section 115 of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996a). Nearly two decades later, it remains unclear how these policies impact criminal offending and recidivism among the individuals who no longer qualify. Have the policies decreased deviant behavior by promoting self-sufficiency from the government dole? Alternatively, have they increased offending by eliminating critical resources to people in financially constrained circumstances? To answer these questions, this project examines the effect of these bans for recidivism outcomes, including arrests, convictions, incarcerations, and time to recidivism. It also considers whether the bans have had differential impacts depending on the benefit program, demographic subgroups, local labor market conditions, crime types, and sentencing outcomes. With criminal justice agencies facing severe financial constraints, it is critical to understand whether welfare policies are exacerbating crime and increasing prison admissions among individuals with previous convictions. Using administrative records from California, the project will employ a novel analytic method--regression discontinuity (RD) analysis--to estimate the causal impact of the bans. RD designs are considered "quasi-experimental" approaches that take advantage of random variation in a treatment variable to approximate pre- and post-test comparisons of experimental designs. In the case of drug-related felonies and public assistance bans, RD analysis methods address several issues that have hampered previous efforts to make causal claims about the effect of the exclusions. Using this method, the project will provide the strongest evidence to date about the impacts of the cash and food stamp bans for recidivism and will provide point estimates of cost-savings (or cost-expenditures) of the welfare policies given criminal justice consequences. In addition, the project will differentiate recidivism effects by benefit program and demographic subgroups, such as women and minorities. It will also examine whether local labor market conditions moderate the consequences of the bans for recidivism, and whether the exclusions impact certain types of criminal behavior, such as pecuniary-related crimes, or types of sentencing outcomes, such as incarceration.

长期以来，人们一直在研究福利系统和刑事司法系统之间的相互关系。然而，人们很少探讨它们与构成个人之间关键结果（例如犯罪）的联系。该项目测试刑事司法以外机构的政府政策是否会影响违法行为。为此，它重点关注可能对犯罪行为产生严重后果的潜在显着但经常被忽视的福利政策。具体而言，1996 年的福利改革政策包括一项规定，禁止犯有毒品相关重罪的个人终生领取现金援助和食品券（《1996a 个人责任与工作机会协调法》第 115 条）。近二十年后，目前尚不清楚这些政策如何影响不再符合资格的个人的刑事犯罪和累犯。 这些政策是否通过促进政府救济的自给自足来减少异常行为？或者，他们是否通过消除经济拮据的人们的关键资源来增加犯罪？为了回答这些问题，本项目研究了这些禁令对累犯结果的影响，包括逮捕、定罪、监禁和累犯时间。它还考虑了禁令是否会根据福利计划、人口亚群体、当地劳动力市场条件、犯罪类型和量刑结果产生不同的影响。由于刑事司法机构面临严重的财务限制，了解福利政策是否加剧了犯罪并增加了有犯罪前科的人入狱的人数至关重要。 该项目将利用加利福尼亚州的行政记录，采用一种新颖的分析方法——断点回归（RD）分析——来估计禁令的因果影响。 RD 设计被认为是“准实验”方法，它利用治疗变量的随机变化来近似实验设计的测试前和测试后比较。在与毒品相关的重罪和公共援助禁令的情况下，RD 分析方法解决了一些阻碍先前对排除影响做出因果断言的努力的问题。使用这种方法，该项目将提供迄今为止最有力的证据，说明现金和食品券禁令对累犯的影响，并将提供考虑到刑事司法后果的福利政策成本节约（或成本支出）的点估计。此外，该项目还将根据福利计划和人口亚群体（例如妇女和少数民族）区分累犯的影响。 它还将研究当地劳动力市场状况是否会缓和累犯禁令的后果，以及排除是否影响某些类型的犯罪行为（例如与金钱相关的犯罪）或量刑结果的类型（例如监禁）。