Do Welfare Drug Offender Bans Affect Recidivism?

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

The interrelationships between welfare and criminal justice systems have long been studied; however, their connections for structuring key outcomes among individuals, such as offending, have been rarely explored. This project tests whether government policies of agencies outside of criminal justice are consequential for shaping law-breaking behavior. To do so, it focuses on a potentially salient but often-overlooked welfare policy that may have critical consequences for criminal behavior. Specifically, the 1996 welfare reform policies included a provision to exclude individuals convicted of drug-related felonies from receiving cash assistance and food stamps for their lifetimes (Section 115 of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996a). Nearly two decades later, it remains unclear how these policies impact criminal offending and recidivism among the individuals who no longer qualify. Have the policies decreased deviant behavior by promoting self-sufficiency from the government dole? Alternatively, have they increased offending by eliminating critical resources to people in financially constrained circumstances? To answer these questions, this project examines the effect of these bans for recidivism outcomes, including arrests, convictions, incarcerations, and time to recidivism. It also considers whether the bans have had differential impacts depending on the benefit program, demographic subgroups, local labor market conditions, crime types, and sentencing outcomes. With criminal justice agencies facing severe financial constraints, it is critical to understand whether welfare policies are exacerbating crime and increasing prison admissions among individuals with previous convictions. Using administrative records from California, the project will employ a novel analytic method--regression discontinuity (RD) analysis--to estimate the causal impact of the bans. RD designs are considered "quasi-experimental" approaches that take advantage of random variation in a treatment variable to approximate pre- and post-test comparisons of experimental designs. In the case of drug-related felonies and public assistance bans, RD analysis methods address several issues that have hampered previous efforts to make causal claims about the effect of the exclusions. Using this method, the project will provide the strongest evidence to date about the impacts of the cash and food stamp bans for recidivism and will provide point estimates of cost-savings (or cost-expenditures) of the welfare policies given criminal justice consequences. In addition, the project will differentiate recidivism effects by benefit program and demographic subgroups, such as women and minorities. It will also examine whether local labor market conditions moderate the consequences of the bans for recidivism, and whether the exclusions impact certain types of criminal behavior, such as pecuniary-related crimes, or types of sentencing outcomes, such as incarceration.