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Introduction The Welfare Act of 1996 banned welfare and food stamp eligibility for felony drug offenders and gave states the ability to modify their use of the law. Today, many states are revisiting their use of this ban, searching for ways to decrease the size of their prison populations; however, there are no empirical assessments of how this ban has affected prison populations and recidivism among drug offenders. Moreover, there are no causal investigations whatsoever to demonstrate whether welfare or food stamp benefits impact recidivism at all. Objective This paper provides the first empirical examination of the causal relationship between recidivism and welfare and food stamp benefits Methods Using a survival-based estimation, we estimated the impact of benefits on the recidivism of drug-offending populations using data from the National Corrections Reporting Program. We modeled this impact using a difference-in-difference estimator within a regression discontinuity framework. Results Results of this analysis are conclusive; we find no evidence that drug offending populations as a group were adversely or positively impacted by the ban overall. Results apply to both male and female populations and are robust to several sensitivity tests. Results also suggest the possibility that impacts significantly vary over time-at-risk, despite a zero net effect. Conclusion Overall, we show that the initial passage of the drug felony ban had no measurable large-scale impacts on recidivism among male or female drug offenders. We conclude that the state initiatives to remove or modify the ban, regardless of whether they improve lives of individual offenders, will likely have no appreciable impact on prison systems.

The US Sentencing Commission's repeated findings of increases in racial disparity after Booker have been questioned by academic researchers and practitioners. Policymakers interested in redressing racial disparity today should pay much closer attention to mandatory minimums and their effects on prosecutorial and judicial decisions. Hofer reviews previous analyses of post-Booker sentencing. Here, Rhodes et al respond that Hofer dismisses the methods and findings of a Abt/BJS report on disparity in federal sentencing. Hofer's arguments continue his on-going critiques of research, mostly done by the US Sentencing Commission. In Hofer's view, research by Abt Associates and the US Sentencing Commission is limited, incomplete, and misleading. Without dismissing Hofer's observations, many of which are meritorious, they defend the Abt research and findings, emphasizing that the main findings from the Abt report are both valid and informative.

The goal of my study is to examine specific school policies to determine if unintentional consequences result from these policies. Specifically, I focus on two main issues as they relate to student and teachers outcomes. I begin by looking at the effect of incapacitating juveniles in school as a force influencing juvenile crime. I exploit teacher strikes as a measure of unexpected student absence from school to measure the effect of school in preventing juvenile crime. My data set consists of information on every juvenile arrest made in Washington State over a 22-year period. I show that previous estimates of the effect of school incapacitation are systematically underestimated, that criminal activity increases as students continue to remain out of school. I also show that these increases in crime reflect an increase in overall crime, not a displacement. Lastly, I show that repeat juvenile offenders are more likely to have committed their first crime on a strike day, relative to a normal school day. Chapters 2 and 3 of the study focus on the role of teacher networks in influencing teacher mobility. Specifically, my study develops a model of teacher networks that describes how teachers assemble networks through professional development activities (PDAs) and how these networks provide an effective sorting mechanism for public school teachers. I empirically test the existence of teacher networks with 2 distinct datasets. The dataset in Chapter 2 is comprised of various reports covering all 67 Florida school districts. Besides examining how professional development affects teacher movement, I am able to exploit the macro nature of the data to compare district characteristics (such as differences in compensation levels and school district density) to examine how these factors also influence teacher mobility. The dataset in Chapter 3 uses survey data from the \"Schools and Staffing Survey\" and includes over 17,000 teachers. The high-powered nature of this dataset allows me to identify specific details, such as teacher salary incentives, individual network strength and union membership. Ultimately I conclude that teacher networks are an integral part of a teacher's transfer decision and have a sizable impact on intra-district teacher mobility.