Prosecutor Politics: The Impact of Election Cycles on Criminal Sentencing in the Era of Rising Incarceration

Chika O. Okafor

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Exploiting variation in the timing of district attorney elections across nearly 40 states during the steepest rise in U.S. incarceration (roughly 1986-2006), this paper shows that election years increased per capita admissions and months sentenced to state prisons, with admissions rising 3 percent--approximately 63,000 additional prison admissions over the period. These effects were concentrated in the South, stronger in Republican counties, and declined as public opinion softened, largely disappearing after the era ended. Results suggest sentencing outcomes respond to voter preferences, implying that the politics underlying rising incarceration may be as important to understand as the policies themselves.

Date: 2021-10, Revised 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Chika O. Okafor. 2026. Prosecutor politics: The Impact of Election Cycles on Criminal Sentencing in the Era of Rising Incarceration. Journal of Public Economics, Volume 262, 105777

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.09169 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:arx:papers:2110.09169

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().