Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment

Francesco Drago and Roberto Galbiati

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We exploit the 2006 Italian prison pardon to evaluate peer effects in criminal behavior. The pardon randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. Using prison and geographical origin to construct reference groups for former inmates, we find large indirect effects of this policy. In particular, we find that the reduction in the individuals' recidivism due to an increase in their peers' residual sentence is at least as large as their response to an increase in their own residual sentence. From this result we estimate a social multiplier in crime of two. (JEL D12, K42, Z13)

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Published in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2012, 4 (2), pp.199-218. ⟨10.1257/app.4.2.199⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment (2012)
Working Paper: Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment (2012)
Working Paper: Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behaviour: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment (2010)
Working Paper: Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behaviour: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment (2010)
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:hal:journl:hal-01410558

DOI: 10.1257/app.4.2.199

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().