Misdemeanor Disenfranchisement? The Demobilizing Effects of Brief Jail Spells on Potential Voters
Name
misdemeanor_draft_spring2018_0.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
227.78 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8936d14a87fa22dcb4da9f169079e5e4
Author(s)
White, Ariel R.
Date Issued
February 2019
Journal
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Citation
White, Ariel. "Misdemeanor Disenfranchisement? The Demobilizing Effects of Brief Jail Spells on Potential Voters." American Political Science Review 113, 2 (February 2019): 311-324 © 2019 American Political Science Association
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
This paper presents new causal estimates of incarceration's effect on voting, using administrative data on criminal sentencing and voter turnout. I use the random case assignment process of a major county court system as a source of exogenous variation in the sentencing of misdemeanor cases. Focusing on misdemeanor defendants allows for generalization to a large population, as such cases are very common. Among first-time misdemeanor defendants, I find evidence that receiving a short jail sentence decreases voting in the next election by several percentage points. Results differ starkly by race. White defendants show no demobilization, while Black defendants show substantial turnout decreases due to jail time. Evidence from pre-arrest voter histories suggest that this difference could be due to racial differences in exposure to arrest. These results paint a picture of large-scale, racially-disparate voter demobilization in the wake of incarceration.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305541800093X
