The Effects of Post-Release Supervision on Crime and Recidivism
Criminal sanctions have deterrent effects; however, the magnitude of these deterrent effects is ambiguous, which is likely in part due to the empirical challenges that the authors face (Durlauf & Nagin, 2011 ). When using criminal sanctions as a source of variation, it is hard to parse out the deterrent effect of sentencing policies from other potentially confounding interventions that are aimed at reducing crime (Chalfin & McCrary, 2017 ). However, the main struggle with quantifying the deterrent effect of criminal sanctions is that more severe punishments usually coincide with an incapacitation effect (Durlauf & Nagin, 2011 ).
The literature on the deterrent effects of community supervision is very limited. Recent empirical work has shown that special “swift-and-certain” probation programs have significant deterrent effects (Hawken & Kleiman, 2009 ; Kilmer & Midgette, 2020 ; Kilmer et al., 2013 ). However, these papers discuss the merits of nontraditional supervision, specifically nontraditional forms of probation. This work does not tell us what can be said about the deterrent effects of traditional supervision on the extensive margin. Recent theoretical papers have considered the deterrent effects of parole and find that good behavior can be rewarded without reducing deterrence (Polinsky, 2015 ; Polinsky & Riskind, 2019 ; Polinsky & Shavell, 2021 ).
My paper contributes to the deterrence literature by providing empirical evidence that criminal sanctions related to community supervision, specifically post-release supervision, result in strong specific deterrent effects on the extensive margin. While under post-release supervision, individuals know that if they are convicted of a new crime, they will be given an additional nine months of prison time on top of their new sentence. Moreover, judges could assign special sanctions as a component of their supervision. Individuals in my study knew if they were assigned a special sanction that would increase their likelihood of being caught should they decide to commit a new crime while under post-release supervision.9
9 For example, individuals may be subject to warrantless searches while under post-release supervision, which would increase the likelihood of being caught.
