Do o older er f female e previou ous prison oner ers - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Do o

• lder

er f female e previou

• us prison
• ner

ers participate in t the labour market?

Joanna Felczak Ewa Gałecka-Burdziak Piotr Błędowski Marek Góra Warsaw School of Economics

Goals

• Investigate whether employment experience protects from

recidivism among older females who experienced a period of incarceration

• Compare employment and unemployment spells
• investigate if labour force participation differed in any manner before

and after the imprisonment spell

• verify if employment experience helped avoiding or postponing the

subsequent incarceration spells

Sample (1)

• administrative data from Poland on a group of older female workers

(born between 1940 and 1965) who registered with any public employment office anytime between 1 June 2004 – 31 December 2017 and at this time experienced one or more incarceration spells.

• In this manner, we had a very specific, but precise sample of old-age

first ever convicted.

• The conducted research may trigger subsequent comparisons across

birth cohorts, genders and/or countries

Sample (2)

• Background: In Poland women make up less than 4% of all inmates.
• They often break the law because of life challenges such as poverty,

unemployment, and significant physical or behavioural health struggles, including those related to past histories of trauma, mental illness, or substance use.

• Most of the incarcerated women had been previously, if ever, employed in

low wage, entry-level positions; many had received public assistance. Types of performed occupation:

• In 89.7% these were routine manual jobs,
• in 6.7% routine cognitive,
• 2.5% non-routine cognitive personal,
• and in total 1% for non-routine cognitive analytical and manual physical.

Sample (3)

• Entire sample 1,709 females

Out of which:

• 1,519 experienced exactly one incarceration spell,
• subsequent 157 two such spells,
• and the rest (33) at least three spells.

They are disadvantaged fraction of the potential labour supply: older female workers, stigmatized and excluded due to incarceration - still young enough to be able to participate in the market and not old enough to be eligible for pension benefits. From individual and society perspectives it is expected and needed that these females successfully reintegrate with the labour market.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the individuals’ characteristics

Mean

• Std. dev.

Age at the beginning of the 1st spell (in years) 46.0 4.4 Educational level (percentage distribution) primary 0.607

• vocational

0.195

• secondary vocational, general secondary, post-secondary and tertiary

0.199

• Total tenure (in years)

11.3 9.4 Unemployment benefit duration (in months) 6.0 3.7 Notes: no. of observations (individuals) 1,709, no. of observations for education 1,705, no. of observations for total tenure 1,320.

Source: own elaboration.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of the duration of particular s pells(in months)

Mean

• Std. dev.

employment 6.6 10.8 unemployment 9.2 11.5 non-participation 6.7 11.2 incarceration 7.4 5.8

Notes: no. of observations: employment 1,917; unemployment 7,802; non-participation 8,567; incarceration 1,941. Source: own calculation.

Methods (1)

• Longitudinal analysis (social sequence analysis, multi-state models)
• Trajectories of the workers since the 1 June 2004 till the end of 2017.

Social sequence:

• we identified the status in the labour market of each individual in each day
• f the observation period.
• We centralized the outcome around the beginning of each individual’s first

incarceration spell.

• In this manner we can compare the labour market status before and after

imprisonment.

• The results are presented in stacked tempogram in Figure 1 and 2

Figure 1. S Stacked d tempo pogram of t the he sha hares o

• f workers i

in n a pa particular s state i in n the he l labo bour m market in n the he

• bservatio

ion pe perio iod d pr prior a and a nd after t the he be beginn nning o

• f the

he first inc ncarceratio ion spe pell (uppe upper pa part) num number of

• f
• bs

bservations ns (lowe wer pa part)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

• 5.5 years

5.5 years employment unemployment incarceration non-participation

Number of observations

200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800

• 5.5 years

5.5 years no of observations

Figure re 2.

• 2. Te

Tempogram for thos

• se,

, who hav ave more than one e incarc rcera ration period ( d (befo fore 1st inc. spel ell and before re 2nd inc. Spel pell)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

• 3128
• 2992
• 2856
• 2720
• 2584
• 2448
• 2312
• 2176
• 2040
• 1904
• 1768
• 1632
• 1496
• 1360
• 1224
• 1088
• 952
• 816
• 680
• 544
• 408
• 272
• 136

136 272 408 544 680 816 952 1088 1224 1360 1496 1632 1768 1904 2040 2176 2312 2448 2584 2720 2856 2992

before 1st inc. spell

employment unemployment incarceration non-participation 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180

• 3128
• 2985
• 2842
• 2699
• 2556
• 2413
• 2270
• 2127
• 1984
• 1841
• 1698
• 1555
• 1412
• 1269
• 1126
• 983
• 840
• 697
• 554
• 411
• 268
• 125

18 161 304 447 590 733 876 1019 1162 1305 1448 1591 1734 1877 2020 2163 2306 2449 2592 2735 2878 3021

• no. of observations
• no. of observations

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

• 4503
• 4313
• 4123
• 3933
• 3743
• 3553
• 3363
• 3173
• 2983
• 2793
• 2603
• 2413
• 2223
• 2033
• 1843
• 1653
• 1463
• 1273
• 1083
• 893
• 703
• 513
• 323
• 133

57 247 437 627 817 1007 1197 1387 1577 1767 1957 2147 2337 2527 2717 2907 3097 3287 3477 3667 3857 4047 4237

before 2nd inc. Spell

employment unemployment incarceration non-participation 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180

• 4503
• 4285
• 4067
• 3849
• 3631
• 3413
• 3195
• 2977
• 2759
• 2541
• 2323
• 2105
• 1887
• 1669
• 1451
• 1233
• 1015
• 797
• 579
• 361
• 143

75 293 511 729 947 1165 1383 1601 1819 2037 2255 2473 2691 2909 3127 3345 3563 3781 3999 4217

• no. of observations
• no. of observations

Results and discussion (1)

• Incarceration preceded in 45% by non-participation and in 50% by

unemployment spells.

• Incarceration followed in 11% by unemployment, and in 88% by non-
• participation. These non participation spells were very short.

On averaged lasted 1.6 months, but in 50% of cases just 10 days, and in 97% of cases were followed by unemployment spells.

• Non participation after incarceration should be as short as possible.

Earlier employment/incentive is better for reintegration.

• 57% of females did not work even once during the entire observation

period, and we observed them on average for 7.7 years (the median equalled 8.2 years).

Results and discussion (2)

• Standard example: unemployed – short incarceration – again unemployed and

incarceration make her difficulties worse. We observe a long period of unemployment after the first sentence for those who had a subsequent sentence. Those who started work earlier were not convicted again.

• Longer sentence –suprisingly- chance to improve qualifications and adapt to the

requirements of the labour market.

• Receive social assistance allowance on the grounds of unemployment - no incentive to

seek work.

• Prisoners paroled under individualized post-release conditions are often obliged to seek

employment with the help of a probation officer.

• These coefficients should be interpreted that employment postpone recidivism and

may reduce the risk of returning to prison. (cause-effect relationship in further research)

Policy recomendation

• The policy recommendation is that state actions should be aimed at

increasing the labour market attachment of the previous and present prisoners.

• Even if someone receive social assistance allowance on the grounds
• f unemployment should also participate in social work and be

socially active to fulfill social roles.

Thank you for your attention!

Joanna.Felczak@sgh.waw.pl