Prison Work and Convict Rehabilitation

Arbeitspapier

I study the causal pathways that link prison work programs to convict rehabilitation, leveraging administrative data from Italy and combining quasi-experimental and structural econometric methods to achieve both a credible identification and the isolation of mechanisms. Due to competing channels, I find that work in unskilled prison jobs impacts convicts on longer or shorter terms differently. Increasing work time by 16 hours per month reduces by between 3 and 10 percentage points the reincarceration rate, within three years of release, of convicts on terms longer than six months – because prison work counteracts the rapid depreciation of earning ability experienced by these convicts. For those on shorter terms, the analogous increase leads instead to a re-incarceration rate that is up to 9 percentage points higher, because of a liquidity effect that weakens deterrence.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 13446

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Coercive Labor Markets
• Subject: prison labor ; prisoner rehabilitation ; crime ; recidivism ; re-incarceration

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Zanella, Giulio
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/223888
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET