President Nixon replaced President Johnson’s War on Poverty with his War on Drugs in 1971. This new drug war was expanded by President Reagan and others to create mass incarceration. The United States currently has a higher percentage of its citizens incarcerated than any other industrial...

We evaluate the effect of perhaps the largest exogenous decline in a state's incarceration rate in U.S. history on local crime rates. We assess the effects of a recent reform in California that caused a sharp and permanent reduction in the state's incarceration rate. We exploit the large...

This paper examines the effects of a private sector prison work program called the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) on unemployment duration, length of formal employment, and earnings of men and women released from various state prisons between 1996 and 2001. The labor...