The Effect of Prison Sentences on Turnout in North Carolina

• In Event: Electoral Effects of Scandals, Crime, and Punishment

Abstract

Criminal-legal institutions are a primary point of contact with the state for millions of Americans. These punitive interactions have manifold consequences for political beliefs and behaviors. However, past research has not studied the causal effect of prison sentences on political participation. By leveraging discontinuities in North Carolina's felony sentencing guidelines for nearly 400,000 felony convictions from 1994-2020, this paper provides the first causal estimates of the effect of prison sentences on voter turnout. Unlike lighter and often earlier forms of carceral contact like police stops and jail sentences, I find that prison sentences do not significantly reduce turnout. I argue that this result is explained by a saturation mechanism meaning that the majority of defendants that receive prison sentences have already been demobilized through prior negative encounters with the carceral state. In support of this argument, I observe substantively large demobilizing effects bordering on statistical significance for defendants incarcerated for the first time and precise null effects for defendants with prior prison sentences.

Author

• Jacob Harris, Cornell University