From Doing Time to Doing Better: How Activities in Prison Shape Inmates' Outcomes

We study how participation in work, education, religious, and other supervised activities during incarceration affects both misconduct in prison and recidivism after release. We use administrative data covering the universe of individuals incarcerated in French prisons between 2016 and 2022. To identify causal effects, we exploit within-individual variation in access to supervised activities across incarceration spells, using a set of instruments based on facility-level offers. We find that participation in work programs significantly reduces both re-offending and in-prison misconduct; education programs have more modest effects. Our results suggest that improved mental health and increased post-release employability help explain the reduction in recidivism. Finally, by comparing different allocations of prison work hours and supervised activities, we provide an estimate of the potential reduction in recidivism and misconduct achievable under constant resource constraints. Joint work with Roberto Galbiati and Arnaud Phillipe