Author Correction: A natural experiment study of the effects of imprisonment on violence in the community.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

A natural experiment study of the effects of imprisonment on violence in the community.

One of the goals of imprisonment is to reduce violence. Although imprisonment has risen dramatically since the 1970s, its effects on future violent crime are poorly understood. This study's objective was to examine the effect of imprisonment on violent crime in the community among individuals on the policy margin between prison and probation sentences.

Short- and long-term effects of imprisonment on future felony convictions and prison admissions.

A substantial contributor to prison admissions is the return of individuals recently released from prison, which has come to be known as prison's "revolving door." However, it is unclear whether being sentenced to prison itself has a causal effect on the probability of a subsequent return to prison or on criminal behavior. To examine the causal effect of being sentenced to prison on subsequent offending and reimprisonment, we leverage a natural experiment using the random assignment of judges with different propensities for sentencing offenders to prison.

HOW THE U.S. PRISON BOOM HAS CHANGED THE AGE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRISON POPULATION.

This article provides a demographic exposition of the changes in the U.S prison population during the period of mass incarceration that began in the late twentieth century. By drawing on data from the Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities (1974-2004) for inmates 17-72 years of age ( = 336), we show that the age distribution shifted upward dramatically: Only 16 percent of the state prison population was 40 years old or older in 1974; by 2004, this percentage had doubled to 33 percent with the median age of prisoners rising from 27 to 34 years old.

Like Parent Like Child? The Role of Delayed Childrearing in Breaking the Link Between Parent's Offending and Their Children's Antisocial Behavior.

This paper investigates the impact of parents' history of violent offending, their age at first birth, and the interaction of the two on their adolescent children's violent behavior. We employ intergenerational longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study to estimate parental trajectories of offending from their early adolescence through early adulthood. We show that the particular shape of the parents' propensity of offending over time can interact with their age at first birth to protect their children from delinquency.

Dispositional sources of sanction perceptions: Emotionality, cognitive style, intolerance of ambiguity, and self-efficacy.

This study contributes to efforts to identify the sources of arrest risk perceptions and ambiguity (or lack of confidence) in such perceptions. Drawing on dual-process theories of reasoning, we argue that arrest risk perceptions often represent intuitive judgments that are influenced by cognitive heuristics and dispositional attributes. Multivariate regression models are estimated with data from 3 national surveys to test 6 hypotheses about the relationships between specific dispositional attributes and perceived arrest risk and ambiguity.

Demographic Patterns of Cumulative Arrest Prevalence By Ages 18 and 23.

In this study, we examine race, sex, and self-reported arrest histories (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY; N = 7,335) for the period 1997 through 2008 covering cumulative arrest histories through ages 18 and 23. The analysis produces three key findings: (1) males have higher cumulative prevalence of arrest than females; and (2) there are important race differences in the probability of arrest for males but not for females. Assuming the missing cases are missing at random, about 30% of black males have experienced at least one arrest by age 18 (vs.

Are Risky Youth Less Protectable As They Age? The Dynamics of Protection During Adolescence and Young Adulthood.

Research on recidivism in criminal justice and desistance in criminology are not integrated. Yet, both fields seem to be moving towards models that look at how positive elements in a person's environment can impact a person's behavior, conditional on different levels of risk. This study builds on this observation by applying interactional theory and the concept of Risk-Needs-Responsivity to theorize that both Needs and Responsivity will change over time in predictable ways.

Cumulative prevalence of arrest from ages 8 to 23 in a national sample.

Objective: To estimate the cumulative proportion of youth who self-report having been arrested or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from ages 8 to 23 years.

Methods: Self-reported arrest history data (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = 7335) were examined from 1997 to 2008.

Results: By age 18, the in-sample cumulative arrest prevalence rate lies between 15.

Using State Child Labor Laws to Identify the Causal Effect of Youth Employment on Deviant Behavior and Academic Achievement.

On the basis of prior research findings that employed youth, and especially intensively employed youth, have higher rates of delinquent behavior and lower academic achievement, scholars have called for limits on the maximum number of hours per week that teenagers are allowed to work. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess the claim that employment and work hours are causally related to adolescent problem behavior. We utilize a change model with age-graded child labor laws governing the number of hours per week allowed during the school year as instrumental variables.