Open Access Post-prison Employment Quality and Future Criminal Justice Contact
Several theories linking post-prison employment to recidivism suggest that the quality of employment has a causal effect on future criminal justice contact. However, previous work testing these theories has not accounted for differential selection into high-quality employment. Using six years of pos...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Russell Sage Foundation
2020-04-01
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| Series: | RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences |
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| Online Access: | https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/6/1/154 |
| Summary: | Several theories linking post-prison employment to recidivism suggest that the quality of employment has a causal effect on future criminal justice contact. However, previous work testing these theories has not accounted for differential selection into high-quality employment. Using six years of post-release employment records, I document how post-prison job quality varies by industry. Then, I use inverse propensity score weighting to estimate the effect of job quality on future arrests and prison spells. Some evidence indicates that parolees who find high-quality employment experience fewer arrests or returns to prison than otherwise similar parolees who find low-quality employment, with the effects most evident when comparing employment in the highest- and lowest-quality industries. Low-quality employment does not appear to reduce future criminal justice contact relative to unemployment. |
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| ISSN: | 2377-8253 2377-8261 |