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Thanks @andy_garin for nominating me for #TweetABlackEconomistsPaper. I’m going to be tweeting about @belindaarch and @nonso2 paper examining the effects of labor market demand shocks on incarceration when prisoners are used as a primary source of labor.
Firstly, they digitized 42 years of prison records from colonial and post-colonial Nigeria. They document that prison labor made up a significant amount of colonial expenditure, and that prisoners were assigned a value of 60-80% below market wage.
Using rainfall shocks, the find that In the colonial period, positive wage shocks increase short-term imprisonment and prison labor. In the post-colonial period, positive rainfall shocks have a u-shape, i.e. imprisonment decreases with wage increases.
The authors theorize that in periods with higher rainfall and positive price shocks, the outside option for laborers became too high, and the colonial government change prosecutions in order to complete infrastructure projects.
Finally, they find that in regions more exposed to these policies, people today have lower trust in courts and justice institutions, but there has been no effect of these policies on interpersonal trust.
Firstly, the data work and digitization is incredible. And the number of specifications and falsification tests build a very convincing picture.
The paper demonstrates a number of important historical facts about the labor market in colonial Nigeria and the role of prison labor in supporting British colonialism.
I saw this paper presented earlier this year, and it's really stuck with me, primarily because of parallels to modern-day America. The US is the most incarcerated country in the world, uses prison labor extensively and pays those prisoners substantially below market rates.
This paper raises important questions about the justice system, and suggests profit motives might be causing incarceration. These motives only exacerbate racial inequities.
But it also demonstrates how the effects of a carceral state are extremely long-lasting. Even if we eliminate prison labor and reduce prison rates, there are long-term impacts on trust in institutions even decades after the fact.
