Abstract
Several theories linking post-prison employment to recidivism suggest that the quality of employment has a causal effect on future criminal justice contact. However, previous work testing these theories has not accounted for differential selection into high-quality employment. Using six years of post-release employment records, I document how post-prison job quality varies by industry. Then, I use inverse propensity score weighting to estimate the effect of job quality on future arrests and prison spells. Some evidence indicates that parolees who find high-quality employment experience fewer arrests or returns to prison than otherwise similar parolees who find low-quality employment, with the effects most evident when comparing employment in the highest- and lowest-quality industries. Low-quality employment does not appear to reduce future criminal justice contact relative to unemployment.
- © 2020 Russell Sage Foundation. LaBriola, Joe. 2020. “Post-prison Employment Quality and Future Criminal Justice Contact.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 6(1): 154–72. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2020.6.1.07. Collection of the data used in this research was funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, the National Institute of Justice (2008-IJ-CX-0018), the National Science Foundation (SES-1061018, SES-1060708), and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1R21HD060160 01A1), and by center grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Studies Centers at the University of Michigan (R24 HD041028) and at the University of California, Berkeley (R24 HD073964). The author acknowledges additional support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (1752814), the NICHD (T32-HD007275), and a Student Award from the University of California, Berkeley, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. This work has benefited from feedback from those working on The Transition to Adulthood After Prison book project, as well as from those attending presentations on this project given to the University of California, Berkeley, MAX-Soc Working Group and the Russell Sage Foundation’s Criminal Justice System as a Labor Market Institution conference. Direct correspondence to: Joe LaBriola at joelabriola{at}berkeley.edu, 410 Barrows Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720.
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