Objectives We study interpretable recidivism prediction using machine learning (ML) models
and analyze performance in terms of prediction ability, sparsity, and fairness. Unlike …

This paper studies the health effects of Swedish prison reforms that held sentences constant
but increased the share of time inmates had to serve. The increased time served did not …

We document persistent gender gaps favoring females in jury convictions and judges'
sentences in nearly 200 years of London trials, which are unexplained by case …

This paper evaluates the effect on crime of creating a fundamental modern-day institution:
centralized professional police forces tasked with preventing crime. We study the 1829 …

A large behavioral economics literature is concerned with cognitive biases in individual and
group decisions, including sequential decisions. These studies often find a negative path …

Criminal juries make decisions of great importance. A key criticism of juries is that they are
unreliable in a multitude of ways, from exhibiting racial or gendered biases, to …

This paper studies the effect of punishment severity on jury decision making using archival
data from London's Old Bailey Criminal Court from 1772 to 1871. We exploit two natural …

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the economic and non-economic channels that
led to a U-shaped trend in the average age of male convicts in 19th century London using …

Abstract The New Poor Law reform of 1834 induced dramatic and heterogeneous reductions
in welfare spending across English and Welsh counties. Using the reform in a difference-in …

Should we use the same standard of proof to adjudicate guilt for murder and petty theft? Why
not tailor the standard of proof to the crime? These relatively neglected questions cut to the …