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Homelessness and Incarceration: A Reciprocal Relationship?

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Abstract

Objectives

Examine whether exits from incarceration lead to homelessness and whether homelessness leads to incarceration.

Methods

This paper uses a unique longitudinal dataset which follows disadvantaged Australians over 2.5 years and provides very detailed information on their housing circumstances. Although studies consistently report a positive association between incarceration and homelessness, little is known about the causal relationship between them. We advance in that direction by exploiting the longitudinal dimension of our data in two ways: (i) employing individual fixed effects models to deal with time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity; (ii) lagging key independent variables to minimise reverse causality issues.

Results

Our results show that homelessness does not increase the risk of incarceration. In contrast, incarceration does increase the probability that an individual will become homeless, but not immediately. Exploiting details of the accommodation calendar 1-24 months after release, we find a modest immediate effect of incarceration on homelessness (a 3 percentage points increase), which increases 6 months after release (to around 12 percentage points) and persists for a further 11 months with respondents most often staying in precarious housing arrangements (boarding houses or with friends with no alternative) rather than becoming literally homelessness.

Conclusions

Our study shows the importance of having adequate coverage for post-release programs to break the link between incarceration and homelessness. Specifically, we find that the critical period for ex-inmates starts 6 months after release suggesting that this may be the time when support programs are currently lacking and would be most efficient.

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Notes

  1. Further information on the Journeys Home population and sample design are discussed in Wooden et al. (2012).

  2. This means that our results are generalisable to the wave 1 JH sample, which is a sample of extremely disadvantaged Australians, but not to the general population.

  3. Note that although the US tradition is to separate literal homelessness from precarious housing, a broader definition of homelessness encompassing both is being used for service provision (Hearth Act, 2009).

  4. This variable is defined following the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council definition, as 21 or more standard drinks per week on average (i.e. more than 2 standard drinks per day).

  5. The full list of controls is given at the bottom of Table 3.

  6. The coefficient reported from Geller and Curtis (2011) in panel a comes from their Table 4, column 3.

  7. This is confirmed when re-estimating models d and e adding incarceration in t-1 as an explanatory variable. Basically, in model (d) with no controls, we find a significant effect of incarceration in t (close to 0.100**) but the effect is insignificant in t-1. Both coefficients are insignificant in models (d) with controls and in the three models (e) with and without controls. Results available upon request.

  8. One may worry that the insignificance of our results is due to over-controlling by taking controls at time t, i.e. controlling for mechanisms that lead inmates to homelessness (e.g substance abuse upon release in t). Given that individual fixed effects with no controls (model (e) column 1) yield very similar insignificant estimates, it cannot be due to the timing of the controls.

  9. Results available on request.

  10. In this framework we use the controls as of the wave in which the accommodation spell under consideration occurred as we don’t have the value of controls for each accommodation spell.

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Acknowledgements

This paper uses data from the Journeys Home study, which was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS), and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views in this paper should not however be attributed to either the DSS or the Melbourne Institute. The authors would like to thank Marah Curtis, Amanda Geller, Stephen Metraux and Dan O’Flaherty for useful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

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Correspondence to Julie Moschion.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Figs. 4, 5 and Tables 8, 9.

Fig. 4
figure 4

The spells data—the effect of incarceration on other accommodation types

Fig. 5
figure 5

The spells data—the effect of incarceration on homelessness by duration of spell

Table 8 Descriptive statistics
Table 9 Complete estimates for the regression results reported in Table 3 panel e and Table 4 panel b with the second set of controls

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Moschion, J., Johnson, G. Homelessness and Incarceration: A Reciprocal Relationship?. J Quant Criminol 35, 855–887 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-019-09407-y

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