Abstract

Most convicted offenders serve their sentences under “community supervision” at home instead of in prison. Under supervision, however, a technical rule violation, such as not paying fees, can result in incarceration. Rule violations account for 25% of prison admissions nationally and are significantly more common among black offenders. I test whether technical rules are effective tools for identifying likely reoffenders and deterring crime and examine their disparate racial impacts using administrative data from North Carolina. Analysis of a 2011 reform reducing prison punishments for technical violations on probation reveals that 40% of rule breakers would go on to commit crimes if spared harsh punishment. The same reform also closed a 33% black-white gap in incarceration rates without substantially increasing the black-white reoffending gap. These effects combined imply that technical rules target riskier probationers overall but disproportionately affect low-risk black offenders. To justify black probationers’ higher violation rate on efficiency grounds, their crimes must be roughly twice as socially costly as that of white probationers. Exploiting the repeat spell nature of the North Carolina data, I estimate a semiparametric competing risks model that allows me to distinguish the effects of particular types of technical rules from unobserved probationer heterogeneity. Rules related to the payment of fees and fines, which are common in many states, are ineffective in tagging likely reoffenders and drive differential effects by race. These findings illustrate the potentially large influence of ostensibly race-neutral policies on racial disparities in the justice system.

中文翻译：

---

谁有第二次机会？刑事罪犯监督的有效性和公平性*

摘要

大多数定罪的罪犯在家里而不是在监狱中，在“社区监督”下服刑。但是，在监督下，违反技术规则（例如不交费用）可能会导致监禁。违反规则占全国监狱入狱的25％，在黑人罪犯中更为常见。我测试了技术规则是否是识别可能的违法者和制止犯罪的有效工具，并使用北卡罗来纳州的行政数据检查了它们的不同种族影响。对2011年的一项改革进行了分析，该改革减少了对因缓刑造成的技术侵权行为的监狱刑罚，该调查表明，如果免除了严厉的刑罚，40％的违规者将继续犯罪。相同的改革还缩小了33％的监禁率，而并未大幅增加黑白再犯差距。这些影响加在一起表明，技术规则总体上针对风险较高的缓刑犯，但对低风险的黑人罪犯的影响不成比例。为了以效率为由证明黑人缓刑犯更高的违法率，其犯罪造成的社会损失大约是白人缓刑犯的两倍。利用北卡罗莱纳州数据的重复拼写性质，我估计了一个半参数竞争风险模型，该模型使我能够将特定类型的技术规则的影响与未观察到的试用者异质性区分开来。在许多州普遍存在的与费用和罚款的支付有关的规则，在标记可能的违法者方面并没有效力，并导致种族差异效应。这些发现说明，表面上种族中立的政策对司法系统中种族差异的潜在巨大影响。