Data and Code for: "Leave the Door Open? Prison Conditions and Recidivism"

We estimate the effect on recidivism of replacing time served in a common closed-cell prison with time served in an open-cell one. We deal with the endogenous assignment of inmates to different prison regimes using variation that is driven by nearby prisons' overcrowding. Switching regimes for a year reduces recidivism by around 6 percentage points (or pp). The effects are largest for inmates with low levels of education and are weak for violent and for hardened criminals.<br>