Testing the Impact of Racial Attitudes and Racial Diversity on Prisoner Reentry Policies in the U.S. States

Abstract

AbstractScholars have done an admirable job explaining the political forces behind the build up in punitive crime policies over the past three decades. This research investigates whether one of these factors—the politics of race—structures the extent to which crime prevention-centered policies are incorporated into states' correctional systems. Using the General Social Survey to create reliable aggregate measures of racial attitudes across the states, I question the extent to which racial attitudes and racial context impact states' propensity to incorporate “softer” prisoner rehabilitation services into their correctional systems. Results show that whites' attitudes toward African Americans and the size of a state's minority population influenced the percentage of prisoners in each state that receive access to education and mental health services in 1995 and 2000. In states with greater racial diversity and states in which whites are less tolerant toward African Americans, state prisoners are less likely to receive rehabilitation services.