By Abhay P. Aneja and Carlos F. Avenancio-Leon

We document that incarceration significantly reduces access to credit, and that in turn leads to substantial increases in recidivism, creating a perverse feedback loop. In the first part of the paper, we use random assignment of criminal cases across judges to document significant post-release reductions in credit outcomes, including credit scores, mortgages, auto loans, and lender assessment of income. In the second part, we use sharp discontinuities in lending based on credit scores to show that this loss of nancial access feeds back into future crime. Consequently, the financial distortions that imprisonment creates undermine the crime-reduction goal of incarceration

Unpublished paper, 2020. 75p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Mary Kreiner Ramirez and Steven A. Ramirez

FROM THE PREFACE: “In defiance of any notion of the rule of law, our government failed to prosecute any senior bankers or large banks at any ofthe major financial firms at the center ofthe financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. This book demonstrates that the US government failed to pursue criminal misconduct that justified charges against the financiers at the center ofthe subprime crisis, and that justified dismantling Wall Street's most powerful megabanks under current law. At the outset, however, we must highlight that this book ofnecessity must proceed upon an inadequate factual foundation specifically because the government failed to adequately investigate and prosecute the enormous crimes underlying the financial crisis.”

NEW YORK New York. UNIVERSITY PRESS. 2017. 260p.