| Summary: | Based on mixed methods, this thesis investigates the social construction of prison statistics. It contributes to econometrics in terms of recidivism behaviors, but also to the sociology of quantification and more broadly to law sociology and economics. It also uses the economics of convention theory.In the first part, we review the existing economic literature about the efficacity of penal sanctions. We then present an original study which shows that convicts who undergo electronic monitoring do re-offend less ceteris paribus than those who have been into jails. In the second part, we analyze how prison statistics are established in detail: how is the data that we have used in our econometric work created? In the third and last part, we explore another blind spot of the econometric method, namely selection bias. How do judges choose who will obtain an alternative to prison?
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