Charles Loeffler

Punishment’s place: the local concentration of mass incarceration

American crime policy took an unexpected turn in the latter part of the twenty-first century, entering a new penal regime. From the 1920s to the early 1970s, the incarceration rate in the United States averaged 110 inmates per 100,000 persons. This rate of incarceration varied so little in the United States and internationally that many scholars believed the nation and the world were experiencing a stable equilibrium of punishment.1 But beginning in the mid-1970s, the U.S. incarceration rate accelerated dramatically, reaching the unprecedented rate of 197 inmates per 100,000 persons in 1990 and the previously unimaginable rate of 504 inmates per 100,000 persons in 2008.2 Incarceration in the United States is now so prevalent that it has become a normal life event for many disadvantaged young men, with some segments of the population more likely to end up in prison than attend college.3 Scholars have broadly described this national phenomenon as mass incarceration.4

Immigration Enforcement, Policing, and Crime

Research Summary In 2008, the federal government introduced “Secure Communities,” a program that requires local law enforcement agencies to share arrestee information with federal immigration officials. We employed the staggered activation of Secure Communities to examine whether this program has an effect on crime or the behavior of local police. Supporters of the program argue that it enhances public safety by facilitating the removal of criminal aliens. Critics worry that it will encourage discriminatory policing. We found little evidence for the most ambitious promises of the program or for its critics’ greatest fears. Policy Implications Although a large body of evidence reports that municipal police can have an appreciable effect on crime, involving local police in federal immigration enforcement does not seem to offer measurable public safety benefits. Noncitizens removed through Secure Communities either would have been incapacitated even in the absence of the program or do not pose an identifiable risk to community safety.

Processed as an Adult: A Regression Discontinuity Estimate of the Crime Effects of Charging Nontransfer Juveniles as Adults

Objectives: Test whether processing non-transfer-eligible juvenile arrestees as adults has any effect on their likelihood of criminal recidivism. Methods: A regression discontinuity design is used to analyze the effect of processing juveniles as adults on a four-year felony rearrest measure using a sample of 78,142 felony drug arrests. Results: For the felony drug offenders in this sample, processing juveniles as adults reduced the probability of recidivism by 3 to 5 percent. Based on the rapid onset and limited change in size of these effects over the duration of a four-year follow-up as well as the concentration of the effect within a subpopulation having the least risk of incarceration, we attribute this finding to a combination of enhanced deterrence and incapacitation in the adult system. Conclusions: Our results suggest that processing juveniles in the adult system may not uniformly increase offending and may reduce offending in some circumstances. Our findings also highlight the utility of quasi-experimental research designs for estimating the life-course effects of contact with the criminal justice system.

Estimating the Crime Effects of Raising the Age of Majority

Research Summary The results of recent empirical research have shown that juveniles do not achieve complete psychosocial maturity until postadolescence and that processing juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system can be associated with elevated rates of criminal recidivism. In response to these as well as other concerns, several states have recently raised their legal ages of majority in the hopes of reducing juvenile offending rates. Connecticut enacted one such law change when it raised its age of majority from 16 to 17 in 2010 and then from 17 to 18 in 2012 for all but the most serious offenses. The effect of Connecticuts policy change on juvenile crime is examined in this study. To discern between changes in juvenile offending and changes in the propensity of police to arrest youthful offenders in the aftermath of a law change, we use two methodological approaches. Synthetic control methods are used to generate triple-differences estimates of the effect of Connecticuts policy change on juvenile arrests and overall crime rates by using a weighted average of other U.S. states as a natural comparison group. Next, by analyzing National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data for a subset of Connecticuts local jurisdictions, we examine changes in age-specific juvenile arrests and changes in age-specific juvenile offending. The resulting evidence suggests that no discernable change in juvenile offending occurred. In addition, evidence exists that in some Connecticut jurisdictions, officer, rather than juvenile, behavior was impacted by this law change. Policy Implications Although raise-the-age policies may remain desirable for other policy reasons, no robust evidence of their effects on crime is yet available. Given the absence of such evidence of crime effects, policy makers interested in raise-the-age policies for their crime-reduction benefits might consider focusing on other juvenile justice policy initiatives with demonstrated crime-reduction benefits. Nevertheless, policy makers interested in these policies for other policy reasons can rest assured that there is no evidence that these policies exacerbate juvenile crime. The results of this study also suggest that the effects of “raise-the-age” policies on crime will be difficult to separate from recent declining trends in juvenile crime and arrests as well as from changes in police arrest decision making.

An Experimental Evaluation of Notification Strategies to Increase Property Tax Compliance: Free-Riding in the City of Brotherly Love

This study evaluates a set of notification strategies intended to increase property tax collection. To test these strategies, we develop a field experiment in collaboration with the Philadelphia Department of Revenue. The resulting notification strategies draw on core rationales for tax compliance: deterrence, the need to finance the provision of public goods and services, as well as an appeal to civic duty. Our empirical findings provide evidence that carefully designed and targeted notification strategies can modestly improve tax compliance.

Decriminalizing Delinquency: The Effect of Raising the Age of Majority on Juvenile Recidivism

In the last decade, a number of states have expanded the jurisdiction of their juvenile courts by increasing the maximum age to 18. Proponents argue that these expansions reduce crime by increasing access to the beneficial features of the juvenile justice system. Critics counter that the expansions risk increasing crime by reducing deterrence. In 2010, Illinois raised the maximum age for juvenile court for offenders who commit a misdemeanor. By examining the effect of this law on juvenile offenders in Chicago, this paper provides the first empirical estimates of the consequences of recent legislative activity to raise the age of criminal majority. Applying a difference-in-differences design with multiple control groups, we find little evidence of an effect. Our results suggest that—contrary to the expectations of both advocates and opponents—increasing the maximum age for juvenile court does not affect juvenile recidivism.

Detecting Gunshots Using Wearable Accelerometers

Gun violence continues to be a staggering and seemingly intractable issue in many communities. The prevalence of gun violence among the sub-population of individuals under court-ordered community supervision provides an opportunity for intervention using remote monitoring technology. Existing monitoring systems rely heavily on location-based monitoring methods, which have incomplete geographic coverage and do not provide information on illegal firearm use. This paper presents the first results demonstrating the feasibility of using wearable inertial sensors to recognize wrist movements and other signals corresponding to firearm usage. Data were collected from accelerometers worn on the wrists of subjects shooting a number of different firearms, conducting routine daily activities, and participating in activities and tasks that could be potentially confused with firearm discharges. A training sample was used to construct a combined detector and classifier for individual gunshots, which achieved a classification accuracy of 99.4 percent when tested against a hold-out sample of observations. These results suggest the feasibility of using inexpensive wearable sensors to detect firearm discharges.

Deterring Tax Delinquency in Philadelphia

Municipal governments commonly confront problems with property tax collection. We model tardy taxpayers as procrastinators that have a present bias. Late payments arise due to lack of salience, lack of deterrence or lack of tax morale. To test the importance of the different theoretical explanations, we developed and implemented a randomized controlled experiment conducted with the City of Philadelphia. The structure of the experiment allows us to identify the relative importance of the three key sets of parameters of our model. We find that lack of salience and lack of deterrence are key components of non-compliance behavior.Municipal governments commonly confront problems with property tax collection. We model tardy taxpayers as procrastinators that have a present bias. Late payments arise due to lack of salience, lack of deterrence or lack of tax morale. To test the importance of the different theoretical explanations, we developed and implemented a randomized controlled experiment conducted with the City of Philadelphia. The structure of the experiment allows us to identify the relative importance of the three key sets of parameters of our model. We find that lack of salience and lack of deterrence are key components of non-compliance behavior.