The Freedom of Others: On Behavioral Responses to Mass-Releases from Prisons in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
Using a wide range of administrative criminal, prison, and police records from the GDR, the paper estimates the incapacitation effect on crime. The paper analyzes a unique quasi-natural experiment: A collective pardon of essentially all GDR prison population in 1987. An instrumental variable strategy is applied to relate crime and recidivism rates to pardon-induced releases from prison. Preliminary results indicate a significantly higher probability of crime and recidivism after the pardon. Interpreting changing levels in incapacitation in a non-democratic state as varying rates of repression the paper contributes to both, the literature on crime and democratization. (research idea)