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,...

Existing research on electoral sentencing cycles shows that elected judges levy longer sentences when they are up for re-election. Using newly collected sentencing data including a number of states not previously studied, we find that elected judges in several states do not appear to change...

This paper provides causal evidence of the effect of private prisons on criminal sentencing. Our identification strategy uses state-level changes in private-prison capacity and compares changes in sentencing across trial court pairs that straddle state borders. We find that a doubling of private...

Existing empirical evidence suggests a pervasive pattern of electoral cycles in criminal sentencing in the U.S.: judges appear to pass more punitive sentences when they are up for re-election, consistent with models of signaling where voters have more punitive preferences than judges. However,...