Did Mass Incarceration Leave Americans Feeling Less Afraid? A Multilevel Analysis of Cumulative Imprisonment and Individual Perceptions of Fear

Abstract

Much of the political rhetoric that facilitated mass incarceration was predicated on the promise of reducing fear among the public. Yet, it remains unclear whether the large increases in imprisonment experienced in many areas made residents feel less afraid. We examine this issue by integrating geographic data on imprisonment with individual-level data on fear from the General Social Survey (GSS). We find that people from states and counties with greater “cumulative imprisonment” rates were no less afraid than their counterparts from areas that imprisoned many fewer people. These findings hold for the public overall and for non-Latino whites and members of the working and middle classes, who frequently were target audiences for political rhetoric linking mass incarceration era policies to fear reduction. Our study supports growing calls to decouple crime and criminal justice policy from politics and electoral cycles, and to develop evidence-based punishment approaches organized around transparent normative principles.