Was Javert right to be suspicious? Unpacking treatment effect heterogeneity of alternative sentences on time-to-recidivism in Brazil

Santiago Acerenza, Vitor Possebom and Pedro Sant'Anna ()

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Abstract: This paper presents econometric tools to unpack the treatment effect heterogeneity of punishing misdemeanor offenses on time-to-recidivism. We show how one can identify, estimate, and make inferences on the distributional, quantile, and average marginal treatment effects in setups where the treatment selection is endogenous and the outcome of interest, usually a duration variable, is potentially right-censored. We explore our proposed econometric methodology to evaluate the effect of fines and community service sentences as a form of punishment on time-to-recidivism in the State of S\~ao Paulo, Brazil, between 2010 and 2019, leveraging the as-if random assignment of judges to cases. Our results highlight substantial treatment effect heterogeneity that other tools are not meant to capture. For instance, we find that people whom most judges would punish take longer to recidivate as a consequence of the punishment, while people who would be punished only by strict judges recidivate at an earlier date than if they were not punished.

Date: 2023-11, Revised 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm and nep-law
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