Presenter: Jorgen Harris, Occidental College

Title: Evaluating the Impact of College-in-Prison Programs on the Behavior and Rehabilitation of Incarcerated Individuals

Abstract: We estimate the effect of a major expansion of in-person college education in California prisons on the disciplinary records, participation in rehabilitative programs, and employment of incarcerated students. In 2014, California allowed public colleges and universities to receive funding for courses offered inside of prisons. Since then, college availability has expanded from one prison to all but one prison in the California system. Using person-level administrative data, we estimate a fuzzy-triple-difference design that leverages differences in the timing and extent of college expansion across prisons, as well as differences in inmates’ propensity to attend college courses on the basis of their characteristics upon incarceration. This is a new approach in the literature that more plausibly addresses unobserved differences between participants and non-participants, as well as between prisons with large and small programs, than do previous studies. We find that college attendance substantially reduces disciplinary incidents, and past enrollment in college courses increases participation in other rehabilitative programs. However, we find no evidence for a reduction in disciplinary incidents after leaving college, nor do we find evidence that college attendance affects the likelihood of holding a high-value job while incarcerated.

Presenter: Jorgen Harris, Occidental College

Title: Evaluating the Impact of College-in-Prison Programs on the Behavior and Rehabilitation of Incarcerated Individuals

Abstract: We estimate the effect of a major expansion of in-person college education in California prisons on the disciplinary records, participation in rehabilitative programs, and employment of incarcerated students. In 2014, California allowed public colleges and universities to receive funding for courses offered inside of prisons. Since then, college availability has expanded from one prison to all but one prison in the California system. Using person-level administrative data, we estimate a fuzzy-triple-difference design that leverages differences in the timing and extent of college expansion across prisons, as well as differences in inmates’ propensity to attend college courses on the basis of their characteristics upon incarceration. This is a new approach in the literature that more plausibly addresses unobserved differences between participants and non-participants, as well as between prisons with large and small programs, than do previous studies. We find that college attendance substantially reduces disciplinary incidents, and past enrollment in college courses increases participation in other rehabilitative programs. However, we find no evidence for a reduction in disciplinary incidents after leaving college, nor do we find evidence that college attendance affects the likelihood of holding a high-value job while incarcerated.

Presenter: Kennedy Johnston, Texas A&M University

Title: The Under-Reporting of Sexual Assault: An Experiment on Victims, Perpetrators, and Social Judgment

Abstract: Sexual assault imposes substantial economic costs, yet existing data likely understate its prevalence. I investigate how social judgment suppresses disclosure by victims and perpetrators. In an online experiment with 1,600 college students and graduates, respondents answer questions about rape and unwanted sexual contact using direct elicitation or "hard-garbling," which provides plausible deniability. Among women, deniability increases reports of non-rape victimization by 23 percent. Among men, it doubles reports of rape perpetration, with 13.1 percent admitting perpetration under hard-garbling. I also find widespread beliefs that victims may be lying and misperceptions about victim-blaming prevalence, suggesting victims anticipate negative judgment for disclosing.

Presenter: Kennedy Johnston, Texas A&M University

Title: The Under-Reporting of Sexual Assault: An Experiment on Victims, Perpetrators, and Social Judgment

Abstract: Sexual assault imposes substantial economic costs, yet existing data likely understate its prevalence. I investigate how social judgment suppresses disclosure by victims and perpetrators. In an online experiment with 1,600 college students and graduates, respondents answer questions about rape and unwanted sexual contact using direct elicitation or "hard-garbling," which provides plausible deniability. Among women, deniability increases reports of non-rape victimization by 23 percent. Among men, it doubles reports of rape perpetration, with 13.1 percent admitting perpetration under hard-garbling. I also find widespread beliefs that victims may be lying and misperceptions about victim-blaming prevalence, suggesting victims anticipate negative judgment for disclosing.

Presenter: Giovanna Úbida, FGV-EESP – São Paulo School of Economics

Title: Alternative Justice, Unintended Harms: How Fast-Track Non-Prosecution Criminal Justice Affects Domestic Violence

Abstract: This paper examines the unintended effects of fast-track, non-prosecution criminal procedures on domestic violence against women. Brazil provides an ideal setting for this analysis, as Law 9.099/95 established the Juizados Especiais Criminais (JECrim), which mandated that all misdemeanor crimes, defined by sentencing thresholds in the Penal Code, be resolved through conciliation hearings rather than formal trials. This nationwide reform aimed to improve judicial efficiency by redirecting minor offenses outside the traditional court system. Although gender-neutral by design, the law applied to many domestic violence cases, particularly minor assaults. We exploit variation in pre-reform misdemeanor assault rates across judicial districts to estimate the impact of the policy on female homicide rates at home. Our difference-indifferences estimates indicate that, over the decade following implementation, a district with average baseline exposure experienced an increase of about 0.16 female homicides at home per 100,000 women, corresponding to roughly a 15% rise relative to the pre-reform mean. The results are robust across specifications and highlight how efficiency-oriented legal reforms can produce adverse spillovers when gender dynamics are not explicitly accounted for.

Presenter: Giovanna Úbida, FGV-EESP – São Paulo School of Economics

Title: Alternative Justice, Unintended Harms: How Fast-Track Non-Prosecution Criminal Justice Affects Domestic Violence

Abstract: This paper examines the unintended effects of fast-track, non-prosecution criminal procedures on domestic violence against women. Brazil provides an ideal setting for this analysis, as Law 9.099/95 established the Juizados Especiais Criminais (JECrim), which mandated that all misdemeanor crimes, defined by sentencing thresholds in the Penal Code, be resolved through conciliation hearings rather than formal trials. This nationwide reform aimed to improve judicial efficiency by redirecting minor offenses outside the traditional court system. Although gender-neutral by design, the law applied to many domestic violence cases, particularly minor assaults. We exploit variation in pre-reform misdemeanor assault rates across judicial districts to estimate the impact of the policy on female homicide rates at home. Our difference-indifferences estimates indicate that, over the decade following implementation, a district with average baseline exposure experienced an increase of about 0.16 female homicides at home per 100,000 women, corresponding to roughly a 15% rise relative to the pre-reform mean. The results are robust across specifications and highlight how efficiency-oriented legal reforms can produce adverse spillovers when gender dynamics are not explicitly accounted for.

Presenter: María Montoya-Aguirre (Paris School of Economics and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Title: Drug Lords in STEM

Abstract: A long-standing view in economics holds that education protects against criminal involvement by improving legal labor market opportunities. But what happens when education becomes a qualification for illegal employment? I study how skill-biased technical change in illegal labor markets affects human capital investment, exploiting the synthetic drug production boom in Mexico, which created criminal demand for workers with chemistry skills. Using China’s April 2019 fentanyl ban as a shock that accelerated Mexican domestic production, I compare educational outcomes in commuting zones with pre-existing synthetic drug infrastructure to those without. Water quality monitoring confirms that exposed areas exhibit the chemical signature of drug production synthesis in the following years. Exposure to synthetic drug production reduces middle school dropout by 21% and high school dropout by 8%, increases time spent studying, and raises tertiary enrollment in chemistry-intensive STEM programs by 6%, with no effect on other fields. These findings demonstrate that when illegal markets demand skilled labor, criminal opportunities boost human capital investment towards skills specific to illegal production.

Presenter: María Montoya-Aguirre (Paris School of Economics and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Title: Drug Lords in STEM

Abstract: A long-standing view in economics holds that education protects against criminal involvement by improving legal labor market opportunities. But what happens when education becomes a qualification for illegal employment? I study how skill-biased technical change in illegal labor markets affects human capital investment, exploiting the synthetic drug production boom in Mexico, which created criminal demand for workers with chemistry skills. Using China’s April 2019 fentanyl ban as a shock that accelerated Mexican domestic production, I compare educational outcomes in commuting zones with pre-existing synthetic drug infrastructure to those without. Water quality monitoring confirms that exposed areas exhibit the chemical signature of drug production synthesis in the following years. Exposure to synthetic drug production reduces middle school dropout by 21% and high school dropout by 8%, increases time spent studying, and raises tertiary enrollment in chemistry-intensive STEM programs by 6%, with no effect on other fields. These findings demonstrate that when illegal markets demand skilled labor, criminal opportunities boost human capital investment towards skills specific to illegal production.

Presenter: Katherine Kwok, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Title: All SROs are not created equal: Heterogeneity in school policing

Abstract: The expansion of police presence in U.S. schools over the past two decades raises questions about the trade-off between student safety and exposure to the criminal justice system. In this paper, we study how schools’ implementation of their school policing program influences the program’s impact on in-school discipline and student academics. Using a difference-in-differences design that leverages a federal grant for hiring School Resource Officers (SROs), we find that schools that received funding to hire an SRO had a 32% decrease in the number of students referred to law enforcement. We also identify the presence and extent of treatment effect heterogeneity in SRO hiring by bounding the variance of the treatment effect distribution and discover meaningful differences across schools in how SRO hiring impacts the number of students suspended or referred to law enforcement. To explain the detected treatment effect heterogeneity, we use school characteristics such as student demographics and also differences in how schools implement their SRO program, measured by extracting themes from text responses in which grant applicants describe problems facing their school. We find that schools whose SRO programs focus on building community have decreased disciplinary action and fewer students who are chronically absent than schools that focus on the SRO’s fulfillment of traditional law enforcement duties.

Presenter: Katherine Kwok, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Title: All SROs are not created equal: Heterogeneity in school policing

Abstract: The expansion of police presence in U.S. schools over the past two decades raises questions about the trade-off between student safety and exposure to the criminal justice system. In this paper, we study how schools’ implementation of their school policing program influences the program’s impact on in-school discipline and student academics. Using a difference-in-differences design that leverages a federal grant for hiring School Resource Officers (SROs), we find that schools that received funding to hire an SRO had a 32% decrease in the number of students referred to law enforcement. We also identify the presence and extent of treatment effect heterogeneity in SRO hiring by bounding the variance of the treatment effect distribution and discover meaningful differences across schools in how SRO hiring impacts the number of students suspended or referred to law enforcement. To explain the detected treatment effect heterogeneity, we use school characteristics such as student demographics and also differences in how schools implement their SRO program, measured by extracting themes from text responses in which grant applicants describe problems facing their school. We find that schools whose SRO programs focus on building community have decreased disciplinary action and fewer students who are chronically absent than schools that focus on the SRO’s fulfillment of traditional law enforcement duties.

Presenter: Roman Rivera (Georgetown University)

Title: The Price of Corrupt Justice: Evidence from Progressive Era Chicago

Abstract: This paper investigates the spillover effects of judicial independence on police behavior. Despite the adversarial design of the US justice system, lower court judges and local police often share political ties and economic incentives to extract revenue. I study a pivotal Progressive Era reform, the 1905 Municipal Court Act (MCA) in Chicago, which replaced patronage-selected, fee-paid `police justices’ with professional, salaried, and elected judges. Crucially, this reform broke the political and economic ties between the courts and police without directly targeting the police department. To study the MCA’s effect, I construct a novel dataset from dozens of archival police, court, and expenditure records. The reform observably increased judicial quality and compensation, but had no effect on police composition or compensation. Nevertheless, the reform caused an over 30% decline in arrests, driven almost entirely by low-quality, highly discretionary misdemeanor arrests. Precinct-level data reveal that this drop was concentrated in the redlight district. Empirical evidence and historical accounts indicate this was due in part to ending a police-justice collusion racket , and I estimate the MCA prevented 9,000 extortive arrests and over $1.2 million (in 2025 dollars) in extorted fees annually. Despite this drastic reduction in enforcement, neither property crime nor murder increased. These findings demonstrate that increasing accountability within a single institution can have positive spillover effects and that severing ideological and economic ties within the justice system can significantly improve local state capacity and public safety.

Presenter: Roman Rivera (Georgetown University)

Title: The Price of Corrupt Justice: Evidence from Progressive Era Chicago

Abstract: This paper investigates the spillover effects of judicial independence on police behavior. Despite the adversarial design of the US justice system, lower court judges and local police often share political ties and economic incentives to extract revenue. I study a pivotal Progressive Era reform, the 1905 Municipal Court Act (MCA) in Chicago, which replaced patronage-selected, fee-paid `police justices’ with professional, salaried, and elected judges. Crucially, this reform broke the political and economic ties between the courts and police without directly targeting the police department. To study the MCA’s effect, I construct a novel dataset from dozens of archival police, court, and expenditure records. The reform observably increased judicial quality and compensation, but had no effect on police composition or compensation. Nevertheless, the reform caused an over 30% decline in arrests, driven almost entirely by low-quality, highly discretionary misdemeanor arrests. Precinct-level data reveal that this drop was concentrated in the redlight district. Empirical evidence and historical accounts indicate this was due in part to ending a police-justice collusion racket , and I estimate the MCA prevented 9,000 extortive arrests and over $1.2 million (in 2025 dollars) in extorted fees annually. Despite this drastic reduction in enforcement, neither property crime nor murder increased. These findings demonstrate that increasing accountability within a single institution can have positive spillover effects and that severing ideological and economic ties within the justice system can significantly improve local state capacity and public safety.

Presenter: Miguel de Figueiredo (University of Connecticut)

Title: Police Drones: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract: While drones are well-known in the context of warfare and foreign surveillance, a relatively new phenomenon has emerged in recent years where domestic police departments are using them for a variety of uses. The phenomenon is growing rapidly. Currently, more than 1,700 police departments use drones, as compared to a few dozen in the mid-2010s. Despite their exploding use, however, we know almost nothing about their effects on police behavior and crime.

This Article presents the first rigorous empirical analysis of police drones. We utilize previously untapped data from Montgomery County, Maryland, a jurisdiction that deployed “drones as first responders” (DFRs) more than 3,500 times in a two-year period. By combining that data with more than 1.7 million service calls and crime incident data, we present a comprehensive and detailed picture of how drones operate in a large county that is some 500 square miles and populated with more than 1,000,000 residents. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we are also able to examine the causal effects of police drones on call response time, call clearance time, and crime.

Our results show that contrary to the hopes of police departments, municipal and county governments, and drone manufacturers, DFRs have had only modest effects on call response time, call clearance time, and crime. Taken together, our results have critical implications for the design of law and policy designed to regulate the use of police drones, and they contribute to difficult decisions involving the cost-benefit analysis of DFRs when weighing tradeoffs between public safety and citizen privacy.