| Project Detail |
Investigating the relationship between crime and economic inequality
Unequal opportunities (in the labour market, healthcare, police exposure) impact the chance of interacting with the justice system. At the same time, having a criminal record and/or prison sentence can exacerbate these inequalities, for both the offenders and their families. Funded by the European Research Council, the POLICE-PRISONS-FIRMS project will study biases in police decisions and the impact of implicit bias training in the United States and United Kingdom context. In the Swedish context, it will study (i) the unintended spillover effects of reforms that expanded prison sentences and introduced electronic monitoring, (ii) the effects of in-prison health treatment on the health as well as criminal behaviour of the offender, and (iii) employment opportunities for individuals with criminal records.
Economic inequality across the population implies vastly unequal opportunities in many dimensions that can impact an individual’s chance of entering the justice system. One such channel via which this can occur – even holding criminal behavior constant – is unequal treatment by agents of the justice system (e.g. police). The consequences of such partiality is not trivial: once in the system, it is hard to get out. And to the extent that convictions and sanctions result in worse outcomes (e.g. employment) for offenders and/or family members, the cycle of crime and economic inequality will perpetuate for current and future generations. This program pushes forward the evidence base on three channels (police, prisons, firms) through which this cycle can be broken.
Part 1 aims to measure and study the adoption of implicit bias training programs by police agencies. Despite such programs being a go-to response of agencies accused of bias, there is almost no knowledge on how/whether they impact officer behavior.
Part 2 addresses the knowledge gap on ‘what (specifically) works’ in prison. First, we will study the unintended impacts of two Swedish sanction reforms onto untreated populations. (i) Does more time in prison have spill-over effects for family members? (ii) Did the introduction of electronic monitoring impact the conditions and outcomes of ineligible offenders left behind in prison? Second, we will open the black-box of prison healthcare to study how in-prison treatment (diagnoses, medication, vaccines, programs) impacts post-release health, medication adherence, and crime.
Part 3 aims to further our understanding of the employment opportunities – or lack thereof – for workers with criminal records (WCR). We will use Swedish registers to study (i) the extent to which WCR are sorted across firms and the determinants of a firm’s demand for WCR, (ii) selection of WCR into self-employment, and (iii) how an offender’s social networks impact firm hiring decisions. |
