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Incarceration is often justified by a defendant鈥檚 risk of future
crime. To what extent do biased beliefs about predictors of crime
distort incarceration decisions? We survey prosecutors about how
violent re-arrest rates vary by defendant age and criminal history.
Surveyed prosecutors make systematic errors: they underestimate
the decline in re-arrest with age and overestimate the increase with
criminal history. By linking prosecutors鈥� beliefs to their quasirandomly
assigned cases, we show that prosecutors鈥� beliefs predict
incarceration patterns by defendant age and criminal history in
their cases. Finally, we find that prosecutors with more accurate
beliefs simultaneously reduce violent re-arrest and incarceration.
