Enfranchisement and Incarceration after the 1965 Voting Rights Act

Nicholas Eubank,Adriane Fresh

doi:10.1017/s0003055421001337

Abstract

The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) fundamentally changed the distribution of electoral power in the US South. We examine the consequences of this mass enfranchisement of Black people for the use of the carceral state—police, the courts, and the prison system. We study the extent to which white communities in the US South responded to the end of Jim Crow by increasing the incarceration of Black people. We test this with new historical data on state and county prison intake data by race (~1940–1985) in a series of difference-in-differences designs. We find that states covered by Section 5 of the VRA experienced a differential increase in Black prison admissions relative to those that were not covered and that incarceration varied systematically in proportion to the electoral threat posed by Black voters. Our findings indicate the potentially perverse consequences of enfranchisement when establishment power seeks—and finds—other outlets of social and political control.

Highlights

The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) fundamentally changed the distribution of electoral power in the US South
We focus on two questions that are important to understanding whether the rise in incarceration documented above was driven by white response to the VRA or the newfound influence of Black voters: first, was it the case that Black voters consistently preferred the increased use of the carceral state in their own communities, and, second, were Black voters de facto empowered by the VRA such that their policy preferences could influence outcomes, or was incarceration primarily observed in areas under white political control
For it to be the case that Black voter demands drove the rise in incarceration rather than the actions of the white electorate and white politicians, it must have been the case that a politically influential contingent of Black voters preferred a more punitive carceral state relative to whites such that enfranchisement under the VRA empowered this contingent to push for more punitive policies, resulting in greater incarceration of Black people