Series # 0810 July 2008 Lessons from Hurricane Katrina : A Natural Experiment of the Effect of Residential Change on Recidivism

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Louisiana Gulf Coast, damaging many of the neighborhoods where ex-prisoners typically reside. Given the residential destruction resulting from Hurricane Katrina, it is unclear whether the resulting geographic displacement of returning prisoners has had any adverse, or even beneficial, impact on the likelihood of recidivism. It may be the case that Hurricane Katrina induced turning points in the life course of former prisoners by separating these individuals from the criminal peers and the criminal temptations that contributed to their criminality in the past. Yet estimating the causal impact of residential migration on the likelihood of recidivism is complicated by the issue of selection bias—the possibility that some unmeasured characteristic of prisoners influences both where they live and their criminal behavior, and may therefore account for any relation between residential change and recidivism. In this study, I utilize a natural experiment as a means of addressing the selection issue, and seek to establish whether the migration of ex-prisoners away from their former place of residence will lead to lower levels of recidivism. Findings suggest that moving away from former geographic areas substantially lowers an ex-prisoner’s likelihood of re-incarceration. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have the feeling that I had to go to Coxsackie, to Woodburn, and then to Sing Sing. I had the feeling now that anything could happen, anything that I decided to do. It seemed a little bit crazy, but I even had the feeling that if I wanted to become a doctor or something like that, I could go on and do it. This was the first time in my life that I’d had that kind of feeling, and getting out of Harlem was the first step toward that freedom. Claude Brown (Manchild in the Promised Land, 1965:178) INTRODUCTION Hurricane Katrina initially developed on August 23, 2005 near the Bahamas, and made its first landfall on the 25 near Ft. Lauderdale as a Category 1 hurricane. The storm then moved into the Gulf of Mexico, and intensified, becoming a Category 5 hurricane by the 28. At roughly 6:10am on August 29, Katrina made its second landfall, near the southern Louisiana town of Buras, and then moved inland towards New Orleans. Levee walls on the Industrial Canal in New Orleans breached from the storm a couple hours later, and additional levee breaches followed soon thereafter. The all-to-familiar consequences are tragic. In Orleans Parish, 71.5 percent of housing units suffered some damage following Hurricane Katrina, with 56 percent of housing units significantly damaged (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2006). The extent of housing unit destruction was similar in adjacent parishes. In both St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish 80 percent of housing units were damaged, while 70 percent were damaged in St. Tammany Parish and 53 percent were damaged in Jefferson Parish. More than one million residents of New Orleans and the larger Gulf Coast region were displaced by the hurricane (Liu et al. 2005). The impacts of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast have been well documented, yet one population group for which the implications of Katrina are still unclear is ex-