Steven Raphael is a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and holds the James D. Marver Chair at the Goldman School of Public Policy. His research focuses on the economics of low-wage labor markets, housing, and the economics of crime and corrections. His most recent research focuses on the social consequences of the large increases in U.S. incarceration rates and racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes. Raphael also works on immigration policy, research questions pertaining to various aspects of racial inequality, the economics of labor unions, social insurance policies, homelessness, and low-income housing. Raphael is the author (with Michael Stoll) of Why Are so Many Americans in Prison? (published by the Russell Sage Foundation Press) and The New Scarlet Letter? Negotiating the U.S. Labor Market with a Criminal Record (published by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research). Raphael is research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the California Policy Lab, the University of Michigan National Poverty Center, the University of Chicago Crime Lab, IZA, Bonn Germany, and the Public Policy Institute of California. Raphael holds a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley.
Contact and Office Hours
Office 2607 Hearst, Room 310
Office Hours
Wednesdays 12:00 - 2:00 PM and by appointment
About
Areas of Expertise
- Labor and Employment
- Race & Ethnicity
- Criminal Justice
- Quantitative Methods
- Economic Policy
- Program Evaluation
- Housing & Urban Policy
- Immigration
- Poverty & Inequality
- Discrimination
- Employment Discrimination
- Labor Economics
- Racial Inequality
- Urban Economics
Curriculum Vitae
Research
Working Papers
The Effect of Scaling Back Punishment on Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes
Working Paper: September 2019 (September 2019)
Research Summary
In late 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47 that redefined a set of less serious felony drug and property offenses as misdemeanors. We examine how racial disparities in criminal court dispositions in San Francisco change in the years before (2010-2014) and after (2015-2016) the passage of Proposition 47. We decompose racial disparities in court dispositions into components due to racial differences in offense characteristics, involvement in the criminal justice system at the time of arrest, pretrial detention, criminal history, and the residual unexplained component. Before and after Proposition 47 case characteristics explain nearly all of the observable race disparities in court dispositions. However, after the passage of Proposition 47 there is a narrowing of racial disparities in convictions and incarceration sentences that is driven by lesser weight placed on criminal history, active criminal justice status, and pretrial detention in effecting court dispositions.
Policy Implications
The findings from this study suggest that policy reforms that scale back the severity of punishment for criminal history and active criminal justice status for less serious felony offenses may help narrow racial inequalities in criminal court dispositions. Efforts to reduce the impact of racial inequalities in mass incarceration in other states should consider reforms that reduce the weight that criminal history, pretrial detention, and active probation status has on criminal defendants’ eligibility for prison for less serious drug and property offenses.
The Effect of Sentencing Reform on Crime Rates: Evidence from California’s Proposition 47
Working Paper: August 2019 (August 2019)
We evaluate whether California’s state proposition 47 impacted state violent and property crime rates. Passed by the voters in November 2014, the proposition redefined many less serious property and drug offenses that in the past could be charged as either a felony or misdemeanor to straight misdemeanors. The proposition caused a sudden and sizable decline in county jail populations, a moderate decline in the state prison population, a decrease in arrests for property and drug offenses, and a wave of legal petitions filed for retroactive resentencing and reclassification of prior convictions. We make use of multiple strategies to estimate the effect of the proposition, including state-level synthetic cohort analysis, within-state event study estimates based on state-level monthly time series, and a cross-county analysis of changes in county-level crime rates that exploit heterogeneity in the effects of the proposition on local criminal justice practices. We find little evidence of an impact on violent crime rates in the state. Once changes in offense definitions and reporting practices in key agencies are accounted for, violent crime in California is roughly at pre-proposition levels and generally lower than the levels that existed in 2010 prior to a wave major reforms to the state’s criminal justice system. While our analysis of violent crime rates yields a few significant point estimates (a decrease in murder for one method and an increase in robbery for another), these findings are highly sensitivity to the method used to generate a counterfactual comparison path. We find more consistent evidence of an impact on property crime, operating primarily through an effect on larceny theft. The estimates are sensitive to the method used to generate the counterfactual, with more than half of the relative increase in property crime (and for some estimates considerably more) driven by a decline in the counterfactual crime rate rather than increases for California for several of the estimators that we employ. Despite this sensitivity, there is evidence from all methods tried that property crime increased with, a ballpark summary of five to seven percent roughly consistent with the totality of our analysis. Similar to violent crime, California property crime rates remain at historically low levels.
Managing Pretrial Misconduct: An Experimental Evaluation of HOPE Pretrial
Working Paper: January 2019 (January 2019)
In this project we evaluate the application of the case management and treatment delivery practices developed under the HOPE probation strategy to pretrial individuals who are conditionally released from jail subject to criminal justice supervision. In the jurisdiction we study (Honolulu, Hawaii), defendants on supervised release are typically monitored by pretrial officers located at the county jail. The revocation of supervised release occurs once a defendant has failed to comply several times with a set of pre-specified conditions, including but not necessarily limited to refraining from drug use and additional criminal activity, maintaining contact with the assigned pretrial officers, and making all scheduled court dates. The intervention we evaluate applies random drug testing in conjunction with swift, certain, consistent, and proportionate sanctions to pretrial misconduct. That is to say, misconduct is met with quickly administered arrest and re-incarceration, yet subsequent jail spells are proportionate to the seriousness of the violation. The intervention also includes drug treatment interventions for those who repeatedly fail drug tests (or who request treatment services) and direct interaction following each violation with the presiding judge of a court devoted to HOPE probation as well as HOPE pretrial defendants.
Between September 2014 and August 2016, felony defendants who failed to make bail and who were granted supervised release were randomly assigned to either status-quo pretrial services or to the HOPE pretrial treatment group. We use administrative data on drug tests, revocations, supervised release case dispositions, and criminal history records to assess whether applying HOPE to individuals on pretrial supervised release impacts various measures of pretrial misconduct, criminal case disposition, and post-disposition arrests. Our findings are the following:
(1) HOPE treatment group members experience more pretrial supervised release revocations most of which are better characterized as modifications but fewer permanent revocations ending the supervised release term relative to control group members.
(2) Treatment under HOPE pretrial reduced the proportion of drug tests resulting in failure. The drug test failure rate for treatment group members was roughly 21 to 30 percent lower than the comparable failure rate observed for the control group with the difference statistically significant.
(3) HOPE treatment did not impact total jail days served between the supervised release date and the disposition date for the criminal case. However, treatment group members serve jail days earlier in their supervised release term while control group members serve more jail days later.
(4) Average total pretrial arrests occurring after supervised release does not differ significantly between the treatment and control group. However, treatment group members are significantly and substantially less likely to be arrested with a new criminal charge.
(5) Treatment group members are less likely to be convicted and less likely to be convicted for a felony.
(6) We do not find statistically significant effects of treatment on post-disposition arrest outcomes.
Racial Disparities in ther Asquisition of Juvenile Arrest Records
Working Paper (August 2017)
The Effect of Mandatory Minimum Punishments on the Efficiency of Criminal Justice Resource Allocation
Working Paper (August 2017)
Selected Publications
Illegality: A Contemporary Portrait of Immigration
Gonzales, Roberto G., and Steven Raphael (2017), “Illegality: A Contemporary Portrait of Immigration,” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 3(4): 1–17.
Prison Downsizing and Public Safety
Lofstrom, Magnus and Steven Raphael (2016), “Prison Downsizing and Public Safety,” Criminology and Public Policy, 15(2): 349-365.
Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality
Lofstrom, Magnus and Steven Raphael (2016), “Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(2): 103-126.
Incarceration and Crime: Evidence from California's Public Safety Realignment
Lofstrom, Magnus and Steven Raphael (2016), “Incarceration and Crime: Evidence from California’s Public Safety Realignment,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664(1): 196-220.
The Role of the Cost-of-Crime Literature in Bridging the Gap Between Social Science Research and Policy Making
Dominguez, Patricio and Steven Raphael (2015), "The Role of the Cost-of-Crime Literature in Bridging the Gap Between Social Science Research and Policy Making", Criminology and Public Policy, 14(4): 589-632.
In the News
Articles and Op-Eds
City and Suburban Crime Trends in the Metropolitan America
Brookings Institute, May 1, 2010
Media Citations
Why Americans Think Crime Is Worse Than It Is
BloombergView, August 2, 2016
Why Americans Think Crime Is Worse Than It Is
BloombergView, August 2, 2016
In the Shadow of Exile
FiveThirtyEight, July 13, 2016
In the Shadow of Exile
FiveThirtyEight, July 13, 2016
California drastically reduced its prison population, and crime didn't skyrocket the way critics thought it might
Business Insider, June 2, 2016
Webcasts
Prison Reform: Alternatives to Mass Incarceration
Steven Raphael, Henry E. Brady,
Date: May 16, 2016 Duration: 29 minutes
2009 Wildavsky Forum Panel Discussion: Changing Inequality: What produces and changes levels of inequality?
Dr. Rebecca M. Blank, Lee Friendman, Mike Hout, Steven Raphael, Robert Reich,
Event: 2009 Wildavsky Forum - Dr. Rebecca Blank
Date: March 13, 2009 Duration: 117 minutes
Last updated on 07/25/2023