Parole Sanctions and Earnings after Release from Prison

• In Event: 478 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Paper Session. Criminal Justice Contact and Inequality

Abstract

Although the labor market consequences of incarceration in prison have been central to the literature on mass incarceration and inequality, other components of the growing criminal justice system have largely been ignored by sociologists. In particular, the rise of mass incarceration was accompanied by an even larger increase in community supervision. In this paper we examine the labor market effects of one frequently experienced aspect of post-prison parole, the high risk of being placed in short-term custody for parole violations. Although such “intermediate sanctions” are viewed as an alternative to returning parole violators to prison, they themselves have the potential to affect labor market outcomes through further stigmatization, disruption of employment, fraying of social networks and social supports, residential instability, and other processes. We estimate that experiencing short-term custody lowers earnings in the formal labor market by approximately 37 percent in the quarter in which the custody was experienced. Although there is a short-term positive effect of short-term sanctions on earnings in the following quarter – consistent with the stated intentions of such sanctions – the effects turn negative in the longer term. In the third quarter following a short-term custody sanction, earnings are lower by about 13 percent than they would have been had the individual not experienced the sanction. These effects are larger for those with the best labor market prospects: those who were employed in the formal labor market before their initial incarceration and those who are white rather than black.

Authors

• Jonah A. Siegel, University of Michigan

• David J. Harding, University of California at Berkeley

• Jeffrey Morenoff, University of Michigan