![handle is hein.journals/legstud44 and id is 1 raw text is:
Testing for Radal Prejudice in the Parole
Board Release Process: Theory and Evidence
Shamena Anwar and Hanming Fang
ABSTRACT
We develop a model of a parole board contemplating whether to grant parole release to a
prisoner who has finished serving his minimum sentence. The model implies a simple outcome
test for racial prejudice that is based on the released inmate's rate of recidivism and is robust
to the inframarginaLity problem. Our model has several testable implications for which we show
empirical support. AppLying our test to data on all prison releases in Pennsylvania between
1999 and 2003, we find no evidence of racial prejudice.
1. INTRODUCTION
It has been widely documented that blacks compose a disproportionate
share of the U.S. prison population. According to the U.S. Bureau of Jus-
tice Statistics, a total of 2,297,500 inmates were held in custody in state
or federal prisons or in local jails as of June 30, 2009. Whites accounted
for 34 percent of the incarcerated population, blacks 39 percent, and
Hispanics 20 percent (West 2010, table 16). In contrast, the fractions of
whites, blacks, and Hispanics in the U.S. population are 64, 12, and 16
percent, respectively (Humes, Jones, and Ramirez 2011).
It is an important policy concern to understand the causes of these
SHAMENA ANWAR is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Carnegie
Mellon University. HANMING FANG is a Professor of Economics at University of Penn-
sylvania and a Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. We would like to
thank William Hubbard, Prasad Krishnamurthy, Nicolas Sahuguet, participants at the
2012 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and an anonymous referee for many helpful
comments and suggestions. We are extremely grateful to Kristofer Bucklen at the Penn-
sylvania Department of Corrections for his assistance with the data. Fang gratefully ac-
knowledges financial support from National Science Foundation grant SES- 1122902. We
are responsible for all remaining errors.
[Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 44 (January 2015)]
© 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0047-2530/2015/4401-0001$10.00](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/legstud44&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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