Over 20 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States are currently awaiting trial, but little is known about the impact of pre-trial detention on defendants. This paper uses the detention tendencies of quasi-randomly assigned bail judges to estimate the causal effects of pre-trial...

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...

We evaluate whether California's state proposition 47 impacted state violent and property crime rates. Passed by the voters in November 2014, the proposition redefined many less serious property and drug offenses that in the past could be charged as either a felony or misdemeanor to straight...