The Effect of Education on In-prison Conflict: Evidence from

ArgentinaMaria Laura Alzua

CEDLAS-Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Catherine RodríguezUniversidad de los Andes

Edgar VillaUniversidad Javeriana

• Motivation• Literature Review• Penal Legislation in Argentina• Educational Requirements of Inmates• Methodology• Data• Results• IV approach• Conclusions and Future steps

Motivation

• Two views of punishment in modern societies: reductivism (i.e. reforming a prisoner lowers future incentives towards violent and criminal behavior) and retributivism (i.e. criminals should be punished because they deserve it).

• Prison based education is thought to reform prisoners so they have less incentives to relapse: a) increasing opportunity costs through potential future wages and/or b) affecting behavior through preferences, risk aversion and moral costs.

• Most empirical studies focus on channel a) for ex-convicts and find evidence that prison based education programs reduce recidivism rates.

• This study looks at individual behavior (violent) within jails for prisoners that by law have to participate in educational programs.

• Little on education in prisons.• Little evidence for Latin America.

Literature Review

• Old criminological studies find in prison education has a negative effect on crime participation, but not controlling for selection into programs.

• Steuer & Smith (2003) three state recidivism study, educational programs lower the possibility of re-arrest.

• Lochner & Moretti (2004), education reduces the probability of incarceration.

• Tyler & Kling (2006) non white convicts increase its after prison income after participating in educational programs.

Policy Implications

• If violent behavior is acquired and has some inertia, then lowering in-prison conflictivity may lower crime in society once prisoners finish their sentence. (Schnur 1949)

• If in-prison violent behavior is related to recidivism, then education may lower crime. (through different channels than that of increasing legal income).

• Supporting reductivism view of the prison system.

Penal Legislation in Argentina

• Legislation changed in 1996. Progressive system of 4 periods: Observation, Treatment, Test and Parole.

• Federal Penitentiary Service in charge of federal prisons where convicted felons for drug trafficking, money laundry, tax evasion among others are sent.

• Provincial Penitentiary Service in charge of all other prisons at the province level.

Educational Requirements and Provision

• Argentine educational system– Initial education (kindergarten): from 3 to 5 years– Elementary education EGB: from 6 to 15– Highschool Polimodal : 3 years– College and Graduate education.

• Law 24.660 (1996): prisons must ensure education to (sentenced and remanded) prisoners with less than 9 years of education.

• Prisoners must participate in educational program unless they provide evidence of 9 years of education. Good for exogeneity of treatment!

• Provision of primary and secondary schooling at the province level is supplied by the province and not the Federal Government which only supervises.

• Province must guarantee a functioning school in each prison. Severe shortage of teachers at province level for adult-population makes the mandate difficult to implement. Moreover, no extra economic incentives for teachers to teach at prisons.

• More restrictions for remanded prisoners to attain education: a) high mobility of these prisoners between prisons; b) valid ID card is necessary to attain education (60% of inmates do not have valid ID card).

Methodology• Natural Experiment: law requires participation in

basic educational programs to achieve EGB but not all prisoners that should comply with the law.

• Treatment: prisoners required by law to achieve EGB and effectively do participate in a basic educational program.

• Control: prisoners required by law to achieve EGB but did not participate in basic educational program.

• Identification assumption: Provinces exogenously decide to provide basic education program.

• If there is just partial exogenous variation calls for IV for educ participation (see below).

• Linear Probability Model and Probit specifications under prison fixed effects for pooled cross sections:

Confit=+educit+timet+Xitc+prisoni+Xit

p+u

conf=1 if prisoner had a conflict in last 6 months (sanctions and/or violent behavior),

educ=1 if prisoner belongs to treatment,

timet: time dummies,

prisoni: prison dummies.

Xc represent individual characteristics of prisoners: age, working in prison dummy, marital status, time in prison, if unemployed when entering, sport activities dummy, prison break attempt, medical assistance dummy, personal vists dummy,

Xp represent prison characteristics that vary in time and within prisons: number of prisoners, average age of inmates, percentage of murderers, rapists and thieves, average education levels and percentage of failed prison breaks.

Data• Annual Census data from 2002 to 2005 of

prisoner population in Argentina.• Data collection did not allow us to construct

panels at individual or prison level.• Detailed information:

– Characteristics of prisoners when arriving at prison– Type of crime committed at entry and stage of the

process in which the prisoner is at– Participation in education program and the level of

education at entry – Participation in conflicts due to bad behavior that was

sanctioned and if prisoner was involved in violent behavior in the last year.

• Measures of conflict within prison: i) extreme violence (extvio): if prisoner

participated in violent behavior that ended up in injuries and/or deaths

ii) violence (vio): if prisoner participated in violent behavior that ended up in material damages

iii) Sanction (sanc): if prisoner had a sanction for his behavior in last year

iv) Severe Sanction (sevsanc): if prisoner had a sever sanction (individual confinement for more than 15 days, transferred to another facility)

Sample consists of Argentine males in the prison state system, sentenced in the “treatment" period, with incomplete legal educational requirements.

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics of Prisons in Argentina 2002-2005  

Gender %Schooling Level when

entering % Marital Status %

Male 94.9 None 7.1 Single 69.4

Female 5.1 Primary Incomplete 23.1 Married 12.9

    Primary Complete 47.9 Widow 1.2

    Secondary Incomplete 13.2 Divorced 1.5

    Secondary Complete 2.9 Living with Partner 12.8

           

Age % Legal status % Felony %

Less than 18 0.1 Sentenced 40,4 Robbery/burglary 40,2

18 a 24 30.2 Remanded 58,0 Homicide 11,3

25 a 34 39,7     Minor robbery 7,3

35 a 44 17,7     Drug trafficking 7,0

45 a 54 7,9     Rape 4,8

55 a 64 2,8     other 28,0

65 or more 0,7        

           

    Period of Process %    

    Observation 8,8    

    Treatment 54,3    

    Test 11,5    

    Parole 0,6    

Table 2    

Descriptive Statistics of Census 2002-2005 Number %

Total Prisoners 34.349 100

Prisoners that had violent behavior (vio) 7.968 23,2

Prisoners with some type of sanction (sanc) 9.621 28,01

Prisoners with sever sanction (sevsanc)7.828 22,79

Prisoners that had extreme violent behavior (extvio) 454 1,32

Participation in EGB5.110 39

Table 3      

Descriptive Statistics of Sample: Participation in Basic Educational Program at

Province Level during 2002-2005

Province Total Prisoners Participation in EGB %

Buenos Aires 1.376 567 41,21

Catamarca 180 2 0,01

Córdoba 3.576 1.529 42,76

Corrientes 678 395 58,26

Chaco 635 447 70,39

Chubut 1.125 868 77,16

Entre Ríos 449 110 24,50

Formosa 306 138 45,10

Jujuy 171 62 36,26

La Pampa 199 70 35,18

La Rioja 22 0 0,00

Misiones 808 142 17,57

Neuquén 432 161 37,27

Río Negro 414 164 39,61

San Juan 338 43 12,72

San Luis 289 9 3,11

Santa Cruz 147 129 87,76

Santa Fe 1.773 225 12,69

Tierra del Fuego 24 4 16,67

Ciudad de BsAs 161 45 27,95

Results

Table 4: Pooled Probit Regressions      

             

  Extvio Extvio Extvio Vio Vio Vio

Educ -0,09 -0.105 -0.105 -0.175 -0.133 -0.146

  (0.061) (0.065) (0.077) (0.048)** (0.051)** (0.072)*

           

Individual controls No Yes Yes No Yes Yes

           

Prison controls No No Yes No No Yes

Observations 9165 9165 9165 9411 9411 9411

Robust standard errors in parentheses        

One-tail test: * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%      

Table 4: (continued) Pooled Probit Regressions    

             

  Sancs Sancs Sancs Sevsancs Sevsancs Sevsancs

Educ -0.011 -0.040 -0.148 0.033 0.002 -0.118

  (0.027) (0.028) (0.030)** (0.028) (0.029) (0.031)**

           

Individual controls No Yes Yes No Yes Yes

           

Prison controls No No Yes No No Yes

Observations 10858 10858 10858 10299 10299 10299

Robust standard errors in parentheses        

One-tail test: * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%      

• Sign of is negative when all controls are included for every variable used to measure conflict.

• Educ participation is statistically significant for all measures of conflict except for extreme violence.

• Marginal effects: participating in education program decreases probability of conflict by– 0.5 percentage points for Violence, – 3.5 percentage points for Sanctions, – 5 percentage points for Sevsanc.

• Similar results are obtained with a linear probability specification.

IV approach– With our current knowledge, we cannot say

explicitly how education is allocated between prisoners, even in the presence of a protocole.

– IV estimation in order to overcome the problem of selection into educational programs.

– Instruments: a) Number of adult teachers per prisoner (Teachers per 100 inhabitants); b) Expenditure in education at province level

Table 5: First Stage of IV    

Dependent variable: Educ (1) (2)

  Probit OLS

Number of teachers per prisoner 0.028 0.009

  (0.004)** (0.001)**

Expenditure on education at the province level 0.0011 0.0004

  (0.00015)** (0.00005)**

Prisoner works in prison 0.110 0.037

  (0.027)** (0.009)**

Years in prison -0.029 -0.009

  (0.005)** (0.002)**

Age -0.007 -0.002

  (0.001)** (0.000)**

Married -0.111 -0.035

  (0.045)* (0.014)*

Unemployed entering prison -0.106 -0.033

  (0.030)** (0.010)**

Number of felonies 0.127 0.043

  (0.018)** (0.006)**

Prison Controls Yes Yes

Observations 11346 11346

R-squared ------ 0.14

Robust standard errors in parentheses    

Two-tail test: * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%    

Table 5: IV Estimation      

  Probit

  Extvio Vio Sancs Sevsancs

Educ 0.504 -1.159 -0.603 -0.433

  (0,44) (0,64)* (0,25)** (0,25)*

       

Individual and prison controls Yes Yes Yes Yes

Observations 9094 9339 10853 10294

R-squared ------- ------- ------- -------

Bootstrap standard errors (1000 replications) in parentheses  

One-tail test: * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%  

• First stage shows that instruments are relevant at 1%. Overidentification test for LPM shows that joint exogeneity cannot be rejected at 1%.

• Sign of is negative for every measure of conflict except extvio which is positive but is the only one in which educ is not statistically significant.

• Educ participation is statistically significant for all measures of conflict except for extreme violence.

• Marginal effects increase: participating in education program decreases probability of conflict by– 4 percentage points for Violence, – 23 percentage points for Sanctions, – 15 percentage points for Sevsanc.

• Similar results are obtained with a linear probability specification (higher actually for violence around 28 percentage points).

• Critique: participating in education program is just capturing the effect of “not having free time” for prisoners to eventually get into conflicts Hence no “reform of prisoners” is taking place by educating them.

• Effect found is simply a way of decreasing probability of conflict by decreasing time available for leisure (busy effect).

– We do control in all specifications “time spent on working” among inmates

– Robustness check: same effect on all specification.

Conclusions and future steps

• Education Participation seems to reduce bad behavior and/or conflict within prisons.

• Information of 2005-2006 census allows to form a panel at individual and prison level.