The Cost of Slow Justice: How Delayed Incarceration Fuels Recidivism

Benjamin Monnery

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Abstract: Criminal punishment often occurs late after the offense. This paper investigates how such delay affects reoffending behavior in a sample of prisoners in France. To overcome omitted variable bias (due to selective effort and diligence to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate the most crime-prone offenders), the paper exploits two sources of exogenous variation in prosecutors' use of Fast-Track Procedures (FTP) in France : the first variation is a discontinuity at age 18 in eligiblity to FTP, while the second is the discrepency in FTP use between large and smaller courts. Both empirical strategies yield similar results : fast-track incarceration has large significant deterrent effects on recidivism, suggesting that slow justice greatly reduces the potential benefits of punishment.

Keywords: economics of crime; recidivism; prison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Published in 34th EAL&E conference , 2017, London (UK), Unknown Region

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01667440

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