Volume 3, Number 2 (Spring) 1968
Evans, Robert, Jr. 1968. "The Labor Market and Parole Success." Journal of Human Resources 3(2):201-212.
The long debate over structural unemployment and the enactment of manpower legislation have stimulated students of the labor market to renew their interest in problems of disadvantaged workers. Among the disadvantaged whose problems have received little professional attention from economists are men recently released from prison. In this paper Mr. Evans seeks to partially redress this deficiency by discussing the influence of success in the labor market on subsequent criminal activity of parolees. In the first section he considers the theoretical context for his analysis, and in the second he presents some results of a survey of two samples of men released from Massachusetts correctional institutions in 1959. In the third section he suggests some public policy implications of his conclusion that success in the labor market is an important factor in parole success.
The author is Associate Professor of Economics, Brandeis University. The research upon which this paper is based was carried out with the cooperation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Department of Corrections and Parole Board. It was largely supported by a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and in part by the Industrial Relations Section of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author is indebted to his two research assistants, Myra Strober and Herbert Cremer, then graduate students at M.I.T. and Columbia, and to Grace Locke for coding, counting, and typing. State officials and employees too numerous to name also were of assistance.
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