Friday, September 12, 2025 13:00 - 14:00

ONLINE

To receive invites to online European Seminars on the Economics of Crime, please join our mailing list for this series. Subscribe/Unsubscribe here (seminar_cepcrime).

About this event

We study the relative impact of custodial and non-custodial sentences on later crime and labor-market outcomes in Denmark, a country where detention conditions are particularly good. To do so, we take advantage of a large-scale reform of the Danish legislation implemented in 2000, whereby incarceration was replaced by a non-custodial sentence for most drunk-driving crimes, which represented a quarter of all custodial sentences passed in 1999. Our first key finding is that stakeholders anticipated the consequences of the reform and that wealthier offenders managed to postpone their trial until after the reform came into force to avoid prison. To measure the relative impact of incarceration, we therefore use a novel instrumentalvariable approach exploiting quasi-exogenous variation in the probability of being tried after the reform, and therefore incarcerated, based on offenders' crime date. We follow sampled individuals over a 15-year period and find that incarcerated offenders commit more crimes and have weaker ties to the labor market after release. Additionally, first-time offenders are more negatively affected than repeat offenders.

Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.

European Seminars on the Economics of Crime are part of the CEP's Community Wellbeing programme and Policing and Crime Research Group.