The United States federal mandatory minimums have been controversial not only because of the length of the mandatory sentences for even first-time offenders, but also because the eligibility quantities for crack are very small when compared to those for other drugs. This paper shows that the...

Does early release decrease or increase the probability that ex-convicts will return to prison? We exploit unique data from Israeli courts, where appearance before the judge throughout the day has an arbitrary component. We first show that judges more often deny parole requests of prisoners...

This paper studies how the system by which mayors are elected impacts mayoral accountability and their provision of public goods. To do so, we analyze policing and crime incidence under mayors directly elected by voters and under mayors appointed by an elected body. Our identification strategy...

We analyze the impact on crime of 3.7 million refugees who entered and stayed in Turkey as a result of the civil war in Syria. Using a novel administrative data source on the flow of offense records to prosecutors' offices in 81 provinces of the country each year, and utilizing the staggered...

Incarceration is a crucial part of the scholarly analysis of crime, but what happens inside penal institutions largely remains a 'black box' (Western, 2021). This paper studies the impact of the new psychoactive substances (NPS) epidemic within prisons. NPS are powerful addictive chemical...

This paper studies the causal impact of court deferrals, a legal strategy to help defendants avoid a felony conviction record, on the future criminal and labor market outcomes of first-time felony drug offenders. To accomplish this, we exploit two natural experiments in Harris County, Texas, in...

Regulated marijuana markets are more common today than outright prohibitions across the U.S. states. Advocates for policies that would legalize marijuana recreational markets frequently argue that such laws will eliminate crime associated with the black markets, which many argue is the only link...

The use of risk assessment scores as a means of decreasing pretrial detention for low-risk, primarily poor defendants is increasing rapidly across the United States. Despite this, there is little evidence on how risk assessment scores alter criminal outcomes. Using administrative data from a...

The controversies surrounding Stand Your Ground laws have recently captured the nation's attention. Since 2005, eighteen states have passed laws extending the right to self-defense with no duty to retreat to any place a person has a legal right to be, and several additional states are debating...

For nearly 50 years academics have been studying how labor markets affect crime. The initial interesting and important theoretical and empirical work generated substantial interest in studying crime among economists, in particular, and scholars in the social sciences more broadly. This...