Work Incentives and the Cost of Redistribution via Tax-transfer Reforms under Constrained Labor Supply

Using information on desired and actual hours of work, we formulate a discrete choice model of constrained labor supply. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and the microsimulation model STSM, we find that hours and participation elasticities are substantially smaller than those in the conventional model. We evaluate two reforms for Germany. Both redistribute to the working poor. The first reform is financed through an increase in the effective marginal tax rate for welfare recipients, the second through an increase in taxes. The first reform is desirable with equal weights, the second if the social planner has substantial redistributive taste

How police use of force at arrest can lead to greater mental health problems among prison inmates.

In many arrests, police use force to restrain suspects, often when suspects are not resisting. But what are the long-term effects of the use of force on those who are arrested? Benjamin Meade, Benjamin Steiner, and Charles Klahm examine the effects of exposure to police use of force, finding that it is significantly associated with increased mental health problems among prison inmates. Such inmates were more likely to experience a greater number of both manic and depressive symptoms compared to those who were not exposed to violence upon arrest. They write that in light of their findings, police administrators may wish reexamine existing use of force policies, and prison administrators should identify inmates who were exposed to police use of force so that they might be assessed for trauma related needs

Using force in arrests against those who are not resisting can mean more violent prisoners.

Recent events have seen a re-evaluation of the relationship between the police and citizens, with increased concern about the use of force during arrests. In new research, Charles Klahm, Benjamin Steiner, and Benjamin Meade find another consequence of police using violent force during arrests: once in prison, inmates who did not resist their arrests were more likely to be involved in rule violations, including acts of violence. They argue that these inmates’ beliefs that their treatment was unfair mean that they may no longer believe in the legitimacy of the police, leading them to be less likely to cooperate with authorities

Despite the idea that all are equal under the law, women are often treated more leniently in pretrial decisions.

The 14th Amendment guarantees that Americans are all equal under the law, but in reality this is often not the case. In new research which covers nearly 78,000 felony defendants, Gillian M. Pinchevsky and Benjamin Steiner examined the whether or not criminal defendants received different treatment based on their sex or other characteristics during their pretrial period. They find that compared to men, female defendants were treated more leniently during the pretrial process. In addition, women arrested for more serious offenses were treated more harshly than other women

Assessing the Relative Effects of State Direct File Waiver Laws on Violent Juvenile Crime: Deterrence or Irrelevance

Juvenile waiver, or transfer, laws allow certain young offenders to be removed from juvenile court jurisdiction and prosecuted in criminal court, where the range of sanctions is presumably greater. In the past several decades, many states have modified their existing transfer statutes in order to streamline the waiver process and make it easier to prosecute juveniles in criminal court. In doing so, states have excluded certain offenses from juvenile court jurisdiction or added concurrent jurisdiction provisions to their existing waiver statutes. Concurrent jurisdiction, or direct file, statutes afford prosecutors the unreviewable discretion to charge certain juveniles in either juvenile or criminal court. Although the increased legislation has generated a considerable amount of evaluations of the various effects of juvenile transfer laws, few studies have examined the deterrent effects of such laws on aggregate juvenile crime. In this study, we assess the general deterrent effects of direct file transfer laws in fourteen states which have such provisions. Findings reveal that direct file laws have little effect on violent juvenile crime

Prison Officer Legitimacy, Their Exercise of Power, and Inmate Rule Breaking

Prison officers are directly responsible for transmitting penal culture and prison policy to the confined, yet few studies of officers’ impact on inmate behavior have been conducted. We examined the effect of inmates’ perceptions of officer legitimacy on rule breaking within prisons, as well as the effects of officers’ reliance on different power bases on rates of rule breaking across prisons. The findings from bi-level analyses of data from inmates and officers from 33 prisons revealed that inmates who held stronger views regarding officer legitimacy committed fewer nonviolent infractions but that perceived legitimacy did not affect the number of violent offenses inmates committed. We also examined a subsample of inmates encountered by officers for a rule violation and found no relationship between perceived legitimacy and subsequent rule breaking, although stronger perceptions of procedural justice related to the incident did directly and indirectly (through perceived legitimacy) coincide with lower odds of nonviolent misconduct. At the prison level, we found that prisons in which officers exercised their authority more lawfully and fairly (positional power) or by relying more on their skills and expertise (expert power) had lower rates of violent or nonviolent rule violations. Prisons in which officers relied more on coercion had higher levels of nonviolent infractions

The Exercise of Power in Prison Organizations and Implications for Legitimacy

Extrapolating from Bottoms and Tankebe’s framework for a social scientific understanding of “legitimacy,” we argue that differences in how correctional officers exercise “power” over prisoners can potentially impact their rightful claims to legitimate authority. Given the implications of this argument for the “cultivation” of legitimacy (as discussed by Weber), the study described here focused on (a) individual and prison level effects on the degree to which officers generally rely on different power bases when exercising their authority, and (b) whether more or less reliance on different power bases at the facility level impacts prisoners’ general perceptions of officers as legitimate authority. Analyses of 1,740 officers from forty-five state prisons in Ohio and Kentucky revealed significant differences in the use of coercive, reward, expert, referent, and positional power based on officer demographics, job training, and experiences, and several characteristics of the prisons themselves. In turn, analyses of 5,616 inmates of these same facilities revealed that greater reliance on expert and positional power at the facility level coincided with inmate perceptions of officers as more fair, equitable, and competent, while greater reliance on coercive power corresponded with perceptions of officers as less fair, less equitable, and less competent. Related foci are important for enlightening discussions of the feasibility of maintaining legitimate authority in a prison setting. How officers might maintain legitimate authority is discussed in light of our specific findings

Examining the Sources of Correctional Officer Legitimacy

Correctional officer legitimacy has been linked to prison safety and order, and it may also be relevant for inmate well-being and facilitating behavioral change. Yet few studies have examined the sources of correctional officer legitimacy. Findings from analyses of survey data collected from over 5,500 inmates housed throughout forty-six facilities in Ohio and Kentucky revealed that inmates’ perceptions of the treatment they received during their most recent encounters with correctional officers (procedural justice) impacted the strength of their beliefs regarding the legitimacy of those officers. The analyses also revealed that background factors such as inmates’ age and race were relevant for shaping their perceptions of correctional officer legitimacy