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Public Choice

Erschienen in:

09.04.2017

Over-incarceration and disenfranchisement

verfasst von: Murat C. Mungan

Erschienen in: Public Choice | Ausgabe 3-4/2017

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Abstract

This article presents a model wherein law enforcers propose sentences to maximize their likelihood of reelection, and shows that elections typically generate over-incarceration, i.e., longer than optimal sentences. It then studies the effects of disenfranchisement laws, which prohibit convicted felons from voting. The removal of ex-convicts from the pool of eligible voters reduces the pressure politicians may otherwise face to protect the interests of this group, and thereby causes the political process to push the sentences for criminal offenses upwards. Therefore, disenfranchisement further widens the gap between the optimal sentence and the equilibrium sentence, and thereby exacerbates the problem of over-incarceration. Moreover, this result is valid even when voter turnout is negatively correlated with people’s criminal tendencies, i.e., when criminals vote less frequently than non-criminals.

Vorheriger Artikel Unpacking pivotal politics: exploring the differential effects of the filibuster and veto pivots

Nächster Artikel Erratum to: Over-incarceration and disenfranchisement

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See, e.g., The American Civil Liberties Union’s web-site dedicated to mass incarceration, where “the war on drugs”, as well as addressing problems related to mental illness, substance use, and homelessness within the criminal justice system are listed as “current issues”.

See, e.g., Clear and Austin (2009) and the references cited therein. A related problem, namely overcorwding of prisons, also has been noted in the literature (Giertz and Nardulli 1985).

As Miles (2004) notes, disenfranchisement laws frequently are discussed in law review articles and notes, most of which are critical of the practice. See Miles (2004 p. 86 n. 2) listing numerous articles and notes.

See, e.g., Bandyopadhyay and McCannon (2014) and the sources cited therein.

Single-peaked preferences, which allow the application of the more widely known median voter theorem, are different from single-crossing preferences. The preferences considered in this article are quite intuitive and satisfy the single-crossing property without the need for imposing any additional restrictions. They become single-peaked preferences if additional restrictions are imposed upon them. However, the results presented do not require the application of the median voter theorem and, thus, I do not impose such restrictions. The differences between single-crossing preferences and single-peaked preferences (as well as the subtle difference between the representative voter theorem used here and the median voter theorem) are explained in greater detail in Gans and Smart (1996).

The median being smaller than the mean is a property that is typically met by right-skewed distributions. The exponential distribution, for instance, is among many well-known distributions that satisfy this property. The assumption that the median is smaller than the mean is invoked in other contexts, including income distributions (see, e.g., Meltzer and Richard 1981). The assumption is likely to hold for serious crimes, for which a conviction leads to disenfranchisement. Whether it holds for mere civil infractions, such as parking violations, is more questionable.

It is worth pointing out that some individuals who have inclinations to commit a particular type of crime may not have a tendency to commit other crimes. Thus, it would be erronous to suggest that all 6.1 million disenfranchised voters having similar preferences over sentences for any given crime. However, given the large number of individuals disenfranchised, the shift in the median voter’s criminal tendencies is likely to be non-negligible.

Elasticities reported in the literature include: 0.4 in Levitt (1998), 0.74 in Drago et al. (2009), 0.06 in Helland and Tabarrok (2007), and less than 0.13 in Lee and McCrary (2016).

This is the standard imprisonment cost specification explained in greater detail in Polinsky and Shavell (2007), wherein punishment has no fixed costs.

An earlier version of this article, Mungan (2016), considers a population that grows at a constant rate. Incorporating this possibility does not affect any of the main results, and allows for comparative statics with respect to the growth rate. The only additional key finding is that the gap between the steady state sanction under disenfranchisement and the optimal sanction is decreasing in the growth rate.

An alternative assumption, which complicates the analysis, is that voters choose the policy that maximizes their lifetime payoffs. This leads to no change in the analysis of the case without disenfranchisement, nor does it affect the optimal sanction (Sects. 3.1–3.2). Moreover, all results that pertain to the effect of disenfranchisement (Sect. 3.3) emerge under this alternative assumption coupled with appropriate beliefs held by voters regarding the effects of sentences in the current period over the sentences elected in future periods.

See, Gans and Smart (1996). See also, Traxler (2009) for an application in the context of tax evasion.

See note 8, above.

One may wonder whether it is even possible for these assumptions simultaneously to hold. To demonstrate that this is possible, let $F^{1}(x)=1-[1+\frac{x}{\gamma }]^{-\alpha }$ (a Pareto distribution) with $\frac{1+\sigma }{h}\gamma<\alpha <1$. It follows that $\varepsilon _{s}=-\frac{\theta _{s}s}{\theta }=\frac{f(ps)}{1-F^{1}(ps)} ps=\frac{\alpha ps}{\gamma +ps}<1$ for all s, since $\alpha <1$. Moreover, $U_{s}(0,\mu )=p\mu f(ps)h-p\mu (1+\sigma )(1-F^{1}(ps))>0$, because $\alpha >\gamma \frac{1+\sigma }{h}$. Thus, both assumptions are satisfied. More generally, these assumptions are satisfied for distributions for which $\lambda (x)x<1$ for all x, and $\lambda (0)>\frac{1+\sigma }{h}$, where $\lambda$ is the hazard function associated with the distribution.

This social welfare function is used as a benchmark and for comparing equilibrium sentences with the optimal sentence frequently derived in the law and economics literature.

This follows, because assumption 1 implies some $s^{h}$ exists such that $\frac{\partial W}{\partial s}<0$ for all $s>s^{h}$, and, assumption 2 guarantees that some $s^{l}$ exists such that $\frac{\partial W}{\partial s}>0$ for all $s<s^{l}$. Nevertheless, one may be interested in the characteristics of the first- and second- order conditions associated with W, which are given by:

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{\partial W}{\partial s}=p\mu [f(ps)(h+p\sigma s)-(\sigma +1)(1-F^{1}(ps))]=0 \end{aligned}$$

and

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{\partial ^{2}W}{\partial s^{2}}=p^{2}\mu [f^{\prime }(ps)(h+p\sigma s)+f(ps)(2\sigma +1)]<0 \end{aligned}$$

which reveals that $f^{\prime }(ps)<0$ at the welfare maximizing sentence.

Specifically, Stigler (1970, p. 527) states: “what evidence is there that society sets a positive value upon the utility derived from a murder, rape, or arson? In fact the society has branded the utility derived from such activities as illicit”.

The bracketed parts are relevant if multiple sanctions maximize the median voter’s utility.

As previously pointed out in note 6, these include many well known distributions, among others, the exponential distribution. But, see von Hippel (2005) discussing exceptions to this rule, mostly when the distribution is discrete or not unimodal.

I am assuming, for simplicity, that disenfranchisement bars all ex-convicts from voting. In reality, different states have different policies. According to Uggen et al. (2016), among the 48 states that have some form of disenfranchisement 34 prohibit parolees and inmates from voting, whereas 12 states impose some form of post-sentence restriction.

Bandyopadhyay, S., & McCannon, B. C. (2014). The effect of the election of prosecutors on criminal trials. Public Choice, 161, 141–156.CrossRef

Becker, G. (1968). Crime and punishment: an economic approach. Journal of Political Economy, 76, 169–217.CrossRef

Clear, T., & Austin, J. (2009). Reducing mass incarceration: Implications of the iron law of prison populations. Harvard Law and Policy Review, 3, 307–324.

Curry, P., & Doyle, M. (2016). Integrating market alternatives into the economic theory of optimal deterrence. Economic Inquiry, 54, 1873–1883.CrossRef

Drago, F., Galbiati, R., & Vertova, P. (2009). The deterrent effects of prison: Evidence from a natural experiment. Journal of Political Economy, 117, 257–280.CrossRef

Gans, J., & Smart, M. (1996). Majority voting with single crossing preferences. Journal of Public Economics, 59, 219–237.CrossRef

Giertz, J., & Nardulli, P. (1985). Prison overcrowding. Public Choice, 46, 71–78.CrossRef

Helland, E., & Tabarrok, A. (2007). Does three strikes deter: A non-parametric investigation. Journal of Human Resources, 42, 309–330.CrossRef

Hjalmarsson, R., & Lopez, M. (2010). The voting behavior of young disenfranchised felons: Would they vote if they could? American Law and Economics Review, 12, 356–393.CrossRef

Langlais, E., & Obidzinski, M. (2016). Law enforcement with a democratic government. American Law and Economics Review, Forthcoming,. doi:10.1093/aler/ahw015.

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Manza, J., & Uggen, C. (2004). Punishment and democracy: Disenfranchisement of nonincarcerated felons in the United States. Perspectives on Politics, 2, 491–505.CrossRef

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Polinsky, A., Shavell, S. (2007). Public enforcement of law. In A. M. Polinsky & S. Shavell (Eds.), Handbook of law and economics (pp. 403–454).

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Uggen, C., Larson, R., Shannon, S. (2016). 6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement. In The Sentencing Project, Washington, D.C.. http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/

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Titel: Over-incarceration and disenfranchisement
verfasst von: Murat C. Mungan
Publikationsdatum: 09.04.2017
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Public Choice / Ausgabe 3-4/2017
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-017-0448-6

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