"In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and …

This paper compares actual US crime and incarceration rates to predicted rates from cross-country regressions. Global … cross-country regressions of crime and incarceration on background characteristics explain much of the variation between … other countries. But the estimated models predict only one-fourth of US incarceration and not all of US crime. The …

, primarily through an increase in guilty pleas. Pre-trial detention has no detectable effect on future crime, but decreases pre …-trial crime and failures to appear in court. We also find suggestive evidence that pre-trial detention decreases formal sector …