American Economics Association Features Paper from Logan Lee on Transitional Housing and Recidivism

The American Economic Journal: Applied Economics published a paper by Associate Professor of Economics Logan Lee exploring the efficacy of transitional housing on preventing recidivism in Iowa. The American Economic Association (AEA) recently featured it as a “research highlight.”

Lee discussed the paper with a representative of the AEA and recorded a short podcast about his research, which concluded that residential housing programs designed to keep prisoners from returning to prison may actually have higher rates of reincarceration than parole.

“Nationally, we spend more than one billion dollars a year on these residential housing programs or on halfway house programs,” says Lee. “This work represents the first causal evidence about whether they're effective.”

In the podcast, Lee discusses the reality of living in a halfway house and the challenges this may pose to former prisoners as well as alternatives that may be more effective in reducing recidivism.

The complete discussion can be found on the AEA website along with a link to Lee’s original research paper.