Economics of Crime and Offender Rehabilitation

We propose to use individual-level data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on the universe of offenders in Britain (several million observations) to assess the effect of disclosure requirements for criminal records on recidivism and crime. The project leverages a natural experiment created by the 2014 amendment to the 1974 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (ROA) which reduced the period during which prior offenses had to be disclosed by ex-convicts to potential employers. The reform created an exogeneous "rehabilitation shock" by removing disclosure requirements for some offenders but not for other very similar offenders.

We combine rich data with cutting-edge econometrics - including a regression discontinuity design, the differences-in-differences method, and descriptive approaches - to isolate the causal effect of disclosure requirements on recidivism. The data contain detailed and longitudinal information on individual offenders' sentences, release dates, and socio-economic background, allowing us to conduct important subgroup analyses.

The PhD student will be supervised by experienced supervisors who are experts in quantitative data analysis. We offer an excellent research environment that features collaboration with experienced researchers, access to state-of-the art safe data facilities, and training in cutting-edge statistical and econometric methods.

The results of the PhD research will be timely and original, not least because to date the 2014 ROA reform has not been evaluated using a large and nationally representative dataset and quantitative methods. There is a large literature gap with respect to research on the causal effect of disclosure requirements on recidivism. By way of our strong knowledge exchange network in the form of the Fraser of Allander Institute, the PhD will be able to disseminate their results to policy makers and other stakeholders, thus ensuring that this research has impact.