Anne Morrison Piehl

Problem-Oriented Policing, Deterrence, and Youth Violence: An Evaluation of Boston's Operation Ceasefire

Operation Ceasefire is a problem-oriented policing intervention aimed at reducing youth homicide and youth firearms violence in Boston. It represented an innovative partnership between researchers and practitioners to assess the citys youth homicide problem and implement an intervention designed to have a substantial near-term impact on the problem. Operation Ceasefire was based on the “pulling levers” deterrence strategy that focused criminal justice attention on a small number of chronically offending gang-involved youth responsible for much of Bostons youth homicide problem. Our impact evaluation suggests that the Ceasefire intervention was associated with significant reductions in youth homicide victimization, shots-fired calls for service, and gun assault incidents in Boston. A comparative analysis of youth homicide trends in Boston relative to youth homicide trends in other major U.S. and New England cities also supports a unique program effect associated with the Ceasefire intervention.

Cross-city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime

Public concerns about the costs of immigration and crime are high, and sometimes overlapping. This article investigates the relationship between immigration into a metropolitan area and that areas crime rate during the 1980s. Using data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the Current Population Surveys, we find, in the cross section, that cities with high crime rates tend to have large numbers of immigrants. However, controlling for the demographic characteristics of the cities, recent immigrants appear to have no effect on crime rates. In explaining changes in a citys crime rate over time, the flow of immigrants again has no effect, whether or not we control for other city-level characteristics. In a secondary analysis of individual data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that youth born abroad are statistically significantly less likely than native-born youth to be criminally active.

Recent Immigrants: Unexpected Implications for Crime and Incarceration

This analysis of data from the 5% 1980 and 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples shows that among 18–40-year-old men in the United States, immigrants were less likely than the native-born to be institutionalized (that is, in correctional facilities, mental hospitals, or other institutions), and much less likely to be institutionalized than native-born men with similar demographic characteristics. Furthermore, earlier immigrants were more likely to be institutionalized than were more recent immigrants. Although all immigrant cohorts appear to have assimilated toward the higher institutionalization rates of the native-born as their time in the country increased, the institutionalization rates of recent immigrants did not increase as quickly as would be predicted from the experience of earlier immigrant cohorts. These results contradict what one would predict from the literature on immigrant earnings, which suggests that more recent immigrants have worse permanent labor market characteristics than earlier immigrants.

Testing for Structural Breaks in the Evaluation of Programs

A standard methodology in program evaluation is to use time series variation to compare pre- and post-program outcomes. However, when the timing of a break in a statistical relationship can be determined only by looking at the data, then the usual distribution of the test statistic which assumes exogenous timing of the break is no longer valid. Tests for parameter instability provide a flexible framework for testing a range of hypotheses commonly posed in program evaluation. These tests help pinpoint the timing of maximal break and provide a valid test of statistical significance. These tests are particularly useful when the start date of the intervention and any effect is unclear and possibly endogenous due to implementation lags. A test of parameter instability is applied to the evaluation of the Boston Gun Project, a comprehensive effort to reduce youth homicide in Boston in the mid 1990s. The dynamics of gang violence meant that no parts of the city could be used as reasonable comparison sites, and thus time series analysis is the only feasible means of evaluating the program impact. The statistical procedure identifies a statistically significant discontinuity in youth homicide incidents shortly after the intervention was unveiled. The intervention was associated with about a 60 percent decline in youth homicide.

Prison buildup and disorder

In contrast to the predictions of many, the prison buildup in the USA did not lead to dramatic increases in chaos behind bars. Instead, prison riots have become rarer, the homicide rate among inmates has declined dramatically and a smaller proportion of inmates are held in segregation and protective custody. Escapes are less common. What caused, then, the trend toward greater, rather than less, order? Neither demographics nor the development of supermax facilities are found to be responsible for much of the improvement. Rather, the data are consistent with the position that political and correctional leadership made prison institutions more effective. There may well be many negative social consequences of the prison buildup, but diminished prison order was not one.

Controlling Violent Offenders Released to the Community: An Evaluation of the Boston Reentry Initiative

Despite the high level of funding and policy interest in prisoner reentry, there is still little rigorous scientific evidence to guide jurisdictions in developing reentry programs to enhance public safety, particularly for managing those who pose the greatest safety risks. The Boston Reentry Initiative (BRI) is an interagency initiative to help transition violent adult offenders released from the local jail back to their Boston neighborhoods through mentoring, social service assistance, and vocational development.This study uses a quasi-experimental design and survival analyses to evaluate the effects of the BRI on the subsequent recidivism of program participants relative to an equivalent control group. The authors find that the BRI was associated with significant reductions—on the order of 30 percent—in the overall and violent arrest failure rates.

Immigration, Crime, and Incarceration in Early Twentieth-Century America

The major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses. The time series pattern reflects a growing gap between natives and immigrants at older ages, one that was driven by sharp increases in the commitment rates of the native-born, while commitment rates for the foreign-born were remarkably stable.

The Inextricable Link Between Age and Criminal History in Sentencing

In sentencing research, significant negative coefficients on age research have been interpreted as evidence that actors in the criminal justice system discriminate against younger people. This interpretation is incomplete. Criminal sentencing laws generally specify punishment in terms of the number of past events in a defendant’s criminal history. Doing so inadvertently makes age a meaningful variable because older people have had more time to accumulate criminal history events. Therefore, two people of different ages with the same criminal history are not in fact equal. This is true for pure retributivists, as the fact that the younger offender has been committing crimes at a higher rate of offending may make the younger offender more culpable, and is also true for those with some utilitarian aims for sentencing. Simulation results illustrate the stakes. To a certain extent, the interests of low-rate older offenders are opposed to those of high-rate younger offenders.

Popular support for the prison build-up

A substantial build-up in prison capacity and the use of incarceration in the USA began in the mid-1970s and continued through to the end of the century. Researchers generally agree that a broad-based social movement supported the build-up, but disagree over the core features of the movement. Some researchers argue that it was the by-product of social discontents associated with rapid social change. Other researchers contend that the movement was an instance of purposeful people seeking solutions to a problem. Across several data sets, little evidence is found to support the position that advocates of the prison build-up had suffered from recent social changes. Instead, the evidence suggests that people supported the build-up for instrumental reasons.

Sentencing Guidelines and Judicial Discretion: Quasi‐Experimental Evidence from Human Calculation Errors

The extent to which rules set by the legislature bind or influence decisions regarding sentence length is central to institutional design and to determining the practical impact of any proposed reform regarding criminal punishment. However, it is generally difficult to identify empirically the impact of sentencing recommendations because court actors may have preferences that are correlated with those outlined in the guidelines. In this article, we take advantage of a new source of identification to study how government actors interact and make decisions in the criminal sentencing process. We identify instances in the Maryland circuit court in which the case facts are not consistent with the final sentence recommendation - inconsistencies that appear to be the result of human error and exogenous to the preferences of downstream actors. We find that even an advisory guidelines system like the one in Maryland has a direct impact on judicial decision making in cases involving drugs and violent crimes. Judges appear eager to go along with an erroneous lesser sentence for violent offenses. In contrast, judges appear to discount mistakes that are too high. This asymmetry does not occur for property and drug offenses that are simpler and more frequently encountered. More generally, experience matters. Error rates are lower for more frequently occurring offense types and lower for those court professionals who complete more of the sentencing worksheets. The net effect of sentencing guidelines on time served appears to be small because parole boards counteract the remaining influence of the guidelines.