Most modern societies are characterized by economic inequality and segregation. For individuals at the bottom-end of the distribution, this inequality is prevalent in many aspects of every day life, including: labor market outcomes, health and healthcare access, social networks, family backgrounds, and neighborhood characteristics. A large body of research shows that each of these factors (and many more) can impact criminal behavior. Unfortunately, once one enters the system, it is hard to get out. Moreover, the relationship between economic inequality and crime is not one way. A wide range of criminal justice interactions, ranging from arrest to incarceration, have also been shown to affect economic (e.g. employment) and non-economic (e.g. health) outcomes.
This research program aims to provide scientific evidence to inform policy makers about how this inequality-crime cycle can potentially be broken. The research team focuses on the role played by three societal institutions – police, prisons, and firms – that individuals interact with at different points in the cycle.
Individuals, even those who have never committed a crime, interact with police in their local neighborhoods. They rely on the police to deter crime and catch criminals. An essential ingredient of a successful police force, however, is the trust in the police of the local population. If trust is low, then people may be unwilling to cooperate with the police, e.g. by reporting crimes or serving as witnesses. Our program aims to further the research frontier on how to measure trust in police and the factors that affect it.
The second part of the program turns to the role played by sanctions, and especially prisons, in breaking the cycle. There are two core research questions. (i) First, are there unintended spill-over effects of sanctions onto populations not directly targeted by the reforms? Many such individuals are potentially exposed to sanctioned offenders, including family members, neighbors, criminal networks, and coworkers. (ii) Second, we aim to open the black box of prison: incarceration exposes an inmate to many treatments, including prison conditions, peers, healthcare, and substance abuse treatment, to name a few. Yet, most existing research focuses on the overall effect of prison, without being able to say what specifically works or does not. Our program studies effects of specific aspects of the prison experience, and especially healthcare, on post-release economic and non-economic outcomes for the both the inmates and those connected to them.
The third part of the program considers the role played by firms. There is ample evidence that workers with criminal records face barriers in the labor market: firms are less willing to hire them. But there is very little understanding of what determines a firm’s demand for workers with criminal records. Using unique Swedish register and novel research methodologies, our project aims to fill this gap. The first project in this part of the agenda answers four core questions: How do workers with and without criminal records compare in their labor market outcomes? What is the causal effect of a criminal record on employment and earnings? How does worker sorting across employers and jobs mediate this effect? To what extent, and why, do employers vary in their willingness to hire workers with records?
