RESEARCH
Publications and Working Papers
PRISON CROWDING AND VIOLENT MISCONDUCT
Evidence from the California Public Safety Realignment (Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Law and Economics)
This paper uses a significant shock to California prison populations, resulting from a U.S. Supreme Court mandate that the state reduce its prison crowding, to analyze the impact of crowding on inmate violence. With monthly observations of 30 California prisons and dual identification strategies, I provide the first evidence of a causal effect of crowding on the rate of prison violence.
STRATEGICÂ ANARCHY
A Model of Prison Violence as a Means to Rent Extraction (Revise and Resubmit at Economic Inquiry)
The modeling framework provided in this paper offers a new perspective on gang violence in the prison setting. Gangs are modeled as profit-maximizing entities in an informal marketplace where the gangs interact strategically to provide contract enforcement and control market share. The model is geared toward implications for policy decisions, such as population density, punitive protocols, surveillance technology, and gang regulation.
RACIAL BIAS ANDÂ STATISTICAL DISCRIMINATION IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE
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The Invisible Threat of Cumulative Systemic Bias (Working Paper)
I illustrate in this model that significant disparities in criminal justice outcomes do not require significant levels of bias on the part of any individual decision maker. I further show that in the presence of cumulative systemic bias, the reasonable application of statistical discrimination may only serve to amplify the preexisting inequities. Finally, I raise concerning implications with respect to the ability of empirical research to identify evidence of bias.
BLIND AND UNBIASED
An Impact Analysis of Eyewitness Reforms (with Steven Clark)
State level reforms implementing sequential line-ups, in place of traditional simultaneous line-ups, are evaluated to determine the impact on department clearance rates for law enforcement agencies. A triple differences identification strategy is applied, utilizing across state variation and across crime category variation to isolate the impact on clearance rates for crimes that typically involve a witness.
STANDARDS AND REMEDIES FOR FAIR REPRESENTATION
Sixth Amendment Protections and the Jury Venire
The Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution grants criminal defendants the right to a trial by a jury selected from a panel that is a "fair representation" of their community. However, the courts have struggled to agree on a single, generalizable standard for assessing whether this requirement has been met. I review the failings of the absolute disparity and comparative disparity standards the are frequently contrasted in existing appellate court precedent. I then propose a conditional probability standard, which is nearly as easy to compute as the alternatives and addresses their obvious shortcomings.