 Do privately-owned prisons increase incarceration rates?Gregmar Galinato () and Ryne Rohla Labour Economics, 2020, vol. 67, issue C Abstract: This article measures the effect of establishing private prisons on incarceration-related outcomes in the United States. We develop a model to show that enforcement authorities faced with capacity constraints or who are more susceptible to bribes set non-optimal sanction levels which may increase total number of incarcerated individuals and each individual's sentence length. Using instrumental variables regressions on state and individual data from 1989 to 2008, we find evidence showing a rise in private prison beds per capita increases the number of incarcerated individuals per capita and average sentence lengths. The effect is more likely for crime types with more sentencing leeway such as fraud, regulatory, drug, and weapons crimes. There is evidence showing the effect of private prisons is more pronounced in states where prison capacity constraints are met or exceeded and if the state is more corrupt. Keywords: Private prisons; Sentencing; Lobbying; Incarceration; Capacity constraint; Corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:67:y:2020:i:c:s0927537120301123 DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101908 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
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