European Seminars on the Economics of Crime (ESEC)

This paper studies how the distance between prison and an incarcerated individual’s home affects their likelihood of recidivism. Leveraging a unique dataset covering more than 20,000 incarcerated individuals and over 200,000 prison visits, I exploit quasi-random variation in home-to-prison distance generated by facility assignment rules. I find that a 100-mile increase in placement distance raises prison readmission within 3 years by almost 4 percent. This effect is driven by a reduction in visitation, with individuals placed farther from home receiving significantly less visits. While social support is theorized to reduce recidivism, there is limited causal evidence on how maintaining these connections through visitation during incarceration affects recidivism. To address this, I use distance as an instrument for visitation, and find that an additional visit per month lowers the likelihood of re-incarceration by roughly 14 percent within one year post-release and 7 percent within three years post-release. I also show that an additional visit per month shortens the fraction of sentence served by one percent and reduces housing instability by 12 percent, the former consistent with a reduction in misconduct and the latter an important mechanism for successful post-release outcomes. Counterfactual estimates suggest assigning individuals closer to home could reduce recidivism by 2 to 4 percent.