The impact of the 2008 economic crisis on imprisonment in Europe

Abstract

We explore how the worldwide economic downturn of the early 2000s affected imprisonment rates across Europe. We test three hypotheses: (i) the recession caused an increase in incarceration rates directly, regulating the excess in labour supply; (ii) it did it indirectly, by affecting crime; (iii) its effects varied according to the institutional context – countries’ welfare states and criminal justice traditions. We use cross-national panel data to fit fixed, random and mixed-effects models and to explain variations in incarceration rates within and across countries during 12 years. The results show that the economic crisis had multiple effects on imprisonment and that these were moderated by the institutional context, increasing it in countries with less comprehensive welfare states and more punitive penal traditions and decreasing it in countries with penal-welfarist policies.