Estimating the Deterrent Effect of Incarceration using Sentencing Enhancements

Increasing criminal sanctions may reduce crime through two primary mechanisms: deterrence and incapacitation. Disentangling their effects is crucial, since each mechanism has different implications for optimal policy setting. I use the introduction of state add-on gun laws, which enhance sentences for defendants possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony, to isolate the deterrent effect of incarceration. Defendants subject to add-ons would be incarcerated in the absence of the law change, so any short-term impact on crime can be attributed solely to deterrence. Using cross-state variation in the timing of law passage dates, I find that the average add-on gun law results in a roughly 5 percent decline in gun robberies within the first three years. This result is robust to a number of specification tests and does not appear to be associated with large spillovers to other types of crime. JEL Classifications: J24, K14, K42 The author would like to thank Liz Ananat, Jessica Cohen, Claudia Goldin, Michael Greenstone, Justin McCrary, Guy Michaels, Sendhil Mullainathan, Sarah Siegel, Jeffrey Smith, Catherine Thomas, and participants of the MIT Labor Lunch, University of Maryland Criminology and Economics Workshop, University of Chicago Applied Microeconomics Lunch, University of Chicago Crime and Punishment Workshop, and Harvard Law & Economics Seminar for very helpful comments. Trevor Gallen and Jon Gillam provided excellent research assistance. The author’s email is [email protected].