The Quality of Life in Prisons: Do Educational Programs Reduce In-prison Conicts?

The harshness of punishment society chooses to impose on crime o¤enders is mandated by law. However, the quality of life in prison can make this pun-ishment harsher. This creates a variation in the severity of punishment which is not legislated and may di¤er from societys taste for penalties. Indicators of in prison violence and conicts seem to be appropriate proxy variables for prison conditions. Using indicators of in prison violent behavior, we use an exogenous source in education participation in educational programs in order to asses the e¤ect of education on such measures of conict. Applying instru-mental variables techniques to census data for Argentine prisons, we \u85nd that educational programs signi\u85cantly reduce indicators of property damages in prison. Such reductions amounts to a 60 percent decrease relative to the mean level of property damages. The authors would like to thank Rafael DiTella, Sebastián Edwards, Ernesto Schargrodsky and all participants in the Inter-American Seminar on Economics, Seminario Universidad Javeriana, LACEA-LAMES 2008 and Canadian Economic Association 2008 for helpful comments. Ignacio Dussaut provided an excellent research assistance. Finally, the authors wish to thank Francisco Scarfo and Hernan Olaetta for their useful help and the Dirección Nacional de Política Criminal of Argentina for providing the data used in this paper. Even though we made our best e¤ort to incorporate these useful comments all remaining errors are the authors