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

Shamena Anwar and Hanming Fang

The Journal of Legal Studies, 2015, vol. 44, issue 1, 1 - 37

Abstract: We develop a model of a parole board contemplating whether to grant parole release to a prisoner who has finished serving his minimum sentence. The model implies a simple outcome test for racial prejudice that is based on the released inmate's rate of recidivism and is robust to the inframarginality problem. Our model has several testable implications for which we show empirical support. Applying our test to data on all prison releases in Pennsylvania between 1999 and 2003, we find no evidence of racial prejudice.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/680994 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/680994 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence (2012)
Working Paper: Testing for Racial Prejudice in the Parole Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/680994

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Legal Studies from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().