Work as a Turning Point in the Life Course of Criminals: A Duration Model of Age, Employment, and Recidivism

TLDR

The link between employment and criminal behavior is unclear, as prior studies suffer from selection bias and age–employment interactions. The study aims to refine estimates of work effects on recidivism by using event‑history models to analyze assignment, eligibility, and participation in a national work experiment for offenders. Event‑history models were applied to data from a national work experiment that tracked assignment, eligibility, and current participation among criminal offenders. The analysis shows that marginal employment reduces self‑reported recidivism among offenders aged 27 or older, but has little effect on teens and early‑twenties, indicating work is a turning point for older but not younger offenders.

Abstract

crimes? Prior research is inconclusive because work effects have been biased by selectivity and obscured by the interaction of age and employment. This study yields more refined estimates by specifying event history models to analyze assignment to, eligibility for, and current participation in a national work experiment for criminal offenders. Age is found to interact with employment to affect the rate of self-reported recidivism: Those aged 27 or older are less likely to report crime and arrest when provided with marginal employment opportunities than when such opportunities are not provided. Among young participants, those in their teens and early twenties, the experimental job treatment had little effect on crime. Work thus appears to be a turning point for older, but not younger, offenders.