ABSTRACT:

Despite the policy relevance of college-in-prison, the existing research on these programs has important flaws, failing to address selection and self-selection bias. We address an important policy question: what are the effects of college-in-prison program? To do this, we provide the largest study published to-date of a single college-in-prison program. We analyze the effects of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) in New York, a liberal arts program that has offered college courses to incarcerated students since 2001. By leveraging the BPI admissions process, we employ a design-based approach to infer the causal effect of participation in BPI. We find a large and significant reduction in recidivism rates. This reduction is consistent across racial groupings. Moreover, people with higher levels of participation recidivate at even lower rates. In light of these findings, we provide policy recommendations that support college-in-prison programs.

摘要：

尽管监狱大学与政策相关，但现有对这些项目的研究存在重大缺陷，未能解决选择和自我选择的偏见。我们解决了一个重要的政策问题：监狱大学计划的影响是什么？为此，我们提供了迄今为止已发表的关于单一监狱大学项目的最大研究。我们分析了纽约巴德监狱倡议 (BPI) 的影响，这是一个自 2001 年以来一直为被监禁的学生提供大学课程的文科课程。通过利用 BPI 录取流程，我们采用基于设计的方法来推断因果关系参与 BPI。我们发现累犯率大幅下降。这种减少在种族群体中是一致的。此外，参与度较高的人的再犯率甚至更低。