Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence

Shamena Anwar () and Hanming Fang
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Shamena Anwar: Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: We develop a model of a Parole Board contemplating whether to grant parole release to a prisoner who has finished serving their minimum sentence. The model implies a simple outcome test for racial prejudice robust to the inframarginality problem. Our test involves running simple regressions of whether a prisoner recidivates on the exposure time to the risk of recidivism and its square, using only the sample of prisoners who are granted parole release strictly between their minimum and maximum sentences and separately by race. If the co- efficient estimates on the exposure time term differ by race, then there is evidence of racial prejudice against the racial group with the smaller coefficient estimate. We implement our test for prejudice using data from Pennsylvania from January 1996 to December 31, 2001. Although we find racial differences in time served, we find no evidence for racial prejudice on the part of the Parole Board based on our outcome test.

Keywords: Racial Prejudice; Statistical Discrimination; Outcome Test; Parole; Recidivism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J71 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2012-07-13
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence (2015)
Working Paper: Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:12-028

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