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American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 5 2015

The Criminal Justice Response to Policy Interventions: Evidence from Immigration Reform

Sarah Bohn1; Matthew Freedman2; Emily Owens3

1 Public Policy Institute of California, 500 Washington St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94111 (e-mail: ) · 2 School of Economics, Drexel University, 3220 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail: ) · 3 Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail: )

Abstract

Changes in the treatment of individuals by the criminal justice system following a policy intervention may bias estimates of the effects of the intervention on underlying criminal activity. We explore the importance of such changes in the context of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). Using administrative data from San Antonio, Texas, we examine variation across neighborhoods and ethnicities in police arrests and in the rate at which those arrests are prosecuted. We find that changes in police behavior around IRCA confound estimates of the effects of the policy and its restrictions on employment on criminal activity.

DOI
10.1257/aer.p20151042
Volume
105
Issue
5
Pages
214-219
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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