Era Of Mass Incarceration Research Articles

Parolee concentration, parolee embeddedness, and the reciprocal relationship with crime rates: A longitudinal study of neighbourhoods and re-entry

Drawing on recent scholarship on mass incarceration and prisoner re-entry, this study examines the reciprocal relationship between returning parolees and neighbourhood crime rates in five large cities in Texas. Besides the more common approach of counting the number of people on parole in communities (parolee concentration), we propose a novel approach for measuring people on parole by capturing their exposure in the community as parolee embeddedness (i.e., the cumulative number of days that people on parole resided in the neighbourhood). Results show that parolee concentration has a significant positive effect on both violent and property crime, but parolee embeddedness is significantly associated with reductions in violent and property crime. Our findings detect different effects depending on the measurement of people on parole and their community context, illustrating the need to better understand the dynamics of parolee re-entry in the era of mass incarceration.

Juries and Prosecutors in an Era of Mass Incarceration

Juries and Prosecutors in an Era of Mass Incarceration

The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarceration

While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term “the prison bust”—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new prison building. We show that the prison bust is, in part, a consequence of development-oriented prison-building policies that aggressively used prisons to stimulate struggling local economies. The bust is primarily concentrated in the counties that pursued prison building most aggressively, reflecting a highly cyclical and reactionary pattern of prison placement and closure. We also show that, relative to counties with at least one prison but no closures, closures are concentrated in metro counties with stronger local economies and multiple prisons. Overall, we highlight the prison bust as an important new era in the history of US punishment and provide a new dataset for investigating its causes and consequences. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.

Gender identity in the era of mass incarceration: The cruel and unusual segregation of trans people in the United States

Abstract The scarce legal recognition of the gender identity of trans people is a contributing factor to the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States. The disproportionately higher rates of incarceration of trans people—especially trans people of color—are driven by discrimination-based barriers to housing, employment, education, and trans-specific healthcare. The denial of trans identity in prison results in the ill-treatment of trans persons, including a heightened exposure to assault and violence. Concerningly, incarcerated trans people are commonly confronted with harsh conditions of confinement such as solitary confinement, which are generally enacted to (presumably) protect their own safety. Against this backdrop, this article advances Eighth Amendment-based arguments for (indirectly) affording a more consistent constitutional protection to gender self-determination in prison settings. First, the article argues that a more robust dignity-based interpretation of the Eighth Amendment regarding the conditions of confinement can lead to recognizing (self-determined) gender-affirming placement as a basic human need, the deprivation of which causes constitutionally relevant harm. The second argument relies upon penal theory to illustrate that the denial of gender self-determination in prison settings, with all the negative corollaries it implies, contradicts the fundamental pillars of each major justification for punishment. Thus, such a denial does not serve any constitutionally justified penological need.

The Prison Bust: Declining Carceral Capacity in an Era of Mass Incarceration

The Prison Bust: Declining Carceral Capacity in an Era of Mass Incarceration

Federal Policies and Mass Incarceration in America

In “the land of the free,” there are 1.6 million people incarcerated in prison or jail as of 2023 (World Prison Brief n.d.). The United States system of mass incarceration disproportionately impacts communities of color and inflicts personal, social, and economic harm on incarcerated individuals. This paper examines the history of previous federal policies and funding that influenced the criminal justice system and how these legislative actions resulted in the era of mass incarceration in the US. This paper concludes that allocating federal funding to support reentry programs, establish universal voting rights, and increase monitoring of reform efforts, along with a coordinated policy response from state lawmakers, will propel lasting change in the criminal justice system.

Carceral Socialization as Voter Suppression

In an era of mass incarceration, many people are socialized through interactions with the carceral state. These interactions are powerful learning experiences, and by design, they are contrary to democratic citizenship. Citizenship is about belonging to a community of equals, being entitled to mutual respect and concern. Criminal punishment deliberately harms, subordinates, and stigmatizes. Encounters with the carceral system are powerful experiences of anti-democratic socialization, and they impact peoples’ sense of citizenship and trust in government. Accordingly, a large body of social science research shows that eligible voters who have carceral contact are significantly less likely to vote or to participate in politics. Hence, the carceral system’s impact on political participation goes well beyond those who are formally disenfranchised due to convictions. It also suppresses participation among the millions of legally eligible voters who have not been formally disenfranchised—people who have had more fleeting encounters with law enforcement or vicarious interactions with the carceral system. This Article considers the implications of these findings from the perspective of voting rights law and the constitutional values underlying it. In a moment when voting rights are under siege, voting rights advocates are in a heated discussion about how our federal and state constitutions protect ideals of democratic citizenship and political equality. This discussion has largely (and for good reason) focused on how the law should address what I call “de jure” suppression: tangible election laws and policies that impose legal barriers to voting, or dilute voting power. Eliminating these formal barriers to voting is vital. But, I argue, fully realizing the constitutional values underlying voting rights will also require also addressing what I call “de facto” suppression, or suppression through socialization. This occurs not through formal legal restrictions on voting, but when state institutions like the carceral system systematically socialize citizens in a manner that is incompatible with democratic citizenship. I show how de facto suppression threatens the constitutional interests protected by the right to vote just like de jure suppression does. In short, by systematically socializing people in a manner that is fundamentally incompatible with democratic citizenship, the state can effectively strip a citizen of much of the instrumental and intrinsic value conferred by the right to vote. Those who are concerned about advancing and protecting voting rights should understand the carceral system’s anti-democratic socialization as a form of political suppression—one that should warrant constitutional scrutiny for the same reasons that de jure suppression should warrant scrutiny.

Examining Case Dismissal Outcomes in Prosecutor-Led Diversion Programs

Prosecutors’ offices are a critical site for criminal legal reform and decarceration efforts. Prosecutor-led diversion programs (PLDPs) are a prosecutorial innovation that process cases away from punitive prosecution and, instead, offer various services and supports. Successfully completing a PLDP results in the dismissal of the charge, which helps participants to avoid formal entry into the criminal legal system and a range of collateral consequences. This paper reports findings from over 11,000 participants in six PLDPs in three Midwestern jurisdictions, and examines race/ethnicity and charge characteristics associated with successful program completion and case dismissal. Findings indicate that PLDPs have the capacity to provide alternative processing to a large volume of defendants with high completion rates, although the likelihood of racial/ethnic minorities to successfully complete the program is mixed. PLDPs are discussed as a promising policy and programmatic innovation that can help to move away from an era of mass incarceration.

Book Review: Daniel P. Mears, Out-of-Control Criminal Justice: The Systems Improvement Solution for More Safety, Justice, Accountability, and Efficiency. Cambridge University Press. 2017

In his book, Out-of-Control Criminal Justice, Daniel Mears writes about what he calls the Systems Improvement Solution, also called the Systems Solution. The Systems Solution is his solution for the way criminal justice policy is currently handled. Mears is an influential criminologist who is also the Mark C. Stafford Professor of Criminology at the Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Mears, n.d.). Along with Out-of-Control Criminal Justice, he is the author of Fundamentals of Criminological and Criminal Justice Inquiry, Prisoner Reentry in the Era of Mass Incarceration, and American Criminal Justice Policy (Mears, n.d.). He is well-versed in his field of criminal justice, research, and policy; his research has also been featured in multiple journals and media outlets (Mears, n.d.). In Out-of-Control Criminal Justice, Mears discusses every aspect concerning his Systems Solution- what a system is as a whole, the innerworkings of a system, how the Systems Solution can be used in other fields besides criminal justice, the emphasis on research, the multi-stakeholder policy process, the benefits of a Systems Solution, and many other pieces needed for a Systems Improvement Solution.

Paying the Price for Privatization: Prison Food in the Era of Mass Incarceration

This essay discusses the development of the prison food industrial complex (PFIC) within the US carceral state. The PFIC is made up of politically connected food services companies and commissary companies (correctional food vendors) contracted by local and state governments to provision correctional facilities; private equity firms also increasingly have a stake in prison food companies. The PFIC developed in the 1980s, when local and state governments increasingly looked to privatizing prison services as solutions to budget crises and the management of unprecedentedly large numbers of people cycling through jails and prisons amid “tough on crime” policies of the late twentieth century. As this essay argues, the emergence of the PFIC has exacted costs on a host of groups, including smaller food producers, unionized public-sector workers, and incarcerated people and their loved ones, while also constituting an overlooked dimension of the ways the US food system disproportionately harms communities of color. In drawing attention to the consequences of the PFIC, this essay seeks to provide new insight into neoliberal reforms of the US carceral state during the mass incarceration era.

Mental Health in the Era of Mass Incarceration.

Mental Health in the Era of Mass Incarceration.

Women's Health in the Era of Mass Incarceration.

Dramatic increases in criminal justice contact in the United States have rendered prison and jail incarceration common for US men and their loved ones, with possible implications for women's health. This review provides the most expansive critical discussion of research on family member incarceration and women's health in five stages. First, we provide new estimates showing how common family member incarceration is for US women by race/ethnicity and level of education. Second, we discuss the precursors to family member incarceration. Third, we discuss mechanisms through which family member incarceration may have no effect on women's health, a positive effect on women's health, and a negative effect on women's health. Fourth, we review existing research on how family member incarceration is associated with women's health. Fifth, we continue our discussion of the limitations of existing research and provide some recommendations for future research.

The Birth Lottery of History: Arrest over the Life Course of Multiple Cohorts Coming of Age, 1995–2018

This article advances and tests hypotheses on arrest in the lives of 1,057 individuals from an original longitudinal study of multiple birth cohorts who came of age during a period of considerable social change in the last quarter-century. The authors show that large cohort differences in the course of arrest arise from changing macrohistorical environments rather than dispositional, demographic, socioeconomic, or neighborhood differences in childhood. Further, the impact of two leading explanations of crime—socioeconomic disadvantage and low self-control—depends on the historical timing of when children reach late adolescence and early adulthood. Cohort fortunes diverge mainly as a result of when both crime rates and police enforcement—especially for drug offenses—unexpectedly fell. The results quantify the power of social change and contribute a new understanding of inter- and intracohort inequalities in growing up during the era of mass incarceration and the great American crime decline.

Community consequences of mass incarceration: sparking neighborhood social problems and violent crime

ABSTRACT Punitive criminal justice policies caused incarceration and reentry rates to sharply increase in the era of mass incarceration. Disadvantaged communities of color have been disproportionately affected by those policies through heightened levels of prison cycling, which is the flow of individuals into and out of prison. Community-level prison cycling has harmful neighborhood consequences, including increased violent crime. This Boston-based study investigates how prison cycling influences crime by exploring three potential pathways. First, prison cycling may undermine beneficial social behavior, reduce collective efficacy, and create an environment susceptible to crime; second, prison cycling may stimulate neighborhood social problems that encourage crime; and third, prison cycling may simply have a direct, toxic relationship with neighborhood violent crime. The analysis employs Boston crime and prison cycling data,and neighborhood social environment data from the 2008 Boston Neighborhood Survey. Contrary to existing theoretical and empirical research, results suggest that prison cycling is not associated with collective efficacy. However, results indicate that prison cycling predicts neighborhood social problems and community violent crime, offering support for alternative theories on the prison cycling and crime relationship. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and policy implications.

Dignity and its discontents: Towards an abolitionist rethinking of dignity

As we approach the decade anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata (2011), it is perhaps a good time to take stock of some of the optimism expressed by this author (Simon, 2014) that the landmark prisoners’ rights decision, with its stark condemnation of the toxic combination of chronic illness, medical neglect, and overcrowding so typical of American prison systems in the era of mass incarceration, and its rhetorical invigoration of ‘dignity’ as a constitutional value, could play a role in taming mass incarceration in the United States. In doing so, part of the inquiry is juridical and jurisprudential. Did the opinion move the court system towards more protection of human rights for prisoners? The second aspect of the question is cultural and political. At a time of unprecedented public interest in reforming the criminal legal system in the United States, has the language or rhetoric of ‘human dignity,’ along with the problems of illness and overcrowding that the Plata case called national attention to, played a role in the foment? The Black Lives Matter movement, a major force in the street protests against policing in the summer of 2020, emerged just two years after Plata and, completely independently, has revitalized abolition discourse in the United States, leading to popular calls to ‘defund’ the police. To what extent should abolition and other goals of the movement for racial justice, supplant human dignity, with its liberal legal genealogy, as a meaningful lodestar for legal and political efforts to end mass incarceration? As an essay in normative sociological jurisprudence, my answers will be both descriptive and prescriptive.

The imprisonment-extremism nexus: Continuity and change in activism and radicalism intentions in a longitudinal study of prisoner reentry.

There is considerable speculation that prisons are a breeding ground for radicalization. These concerns take on added significance in the era of mass incarceration in the United States, where 1.5 million people are held in state or federal prisons and around 600,000 people are released from prison annually. Prior research relies primarily on the speculation of prison officials, media representations, and/or cross-sectional designs to understand the imprisonment-extremism nexus. We develop a tripartite theoretical model to examine continuity and change in activism and radicalism intentions upon leaving prison. We test these models using data from a large probability sample of prisoners (N = 802) in Texas interviewed in the week preceding their release from prison and then reinterviewed 10 months later using a validated scale of activism and radicalism intentions. We arrive at three primary conclusions. First, levels of activism decline upon reentry to the community (d = -0.30, p < .01), while levels of radicalism largely remain unchanged (d = -0.08, p = .28). What is learned and practiced in prison appears to quickly lose its vitality on the street. Second, salient groups and organizations fell in importance after leaving prison, including country, race/ethnicity, and religion, suggesting former prisoners are occupied by other endeavors. Finally, while we identify few correlates of changes in extremist intentions, higher levels of legal cynicism in prison were associated with increases in both activism and radicalism intentions after release from prison. Efforts designed to improve legal orientations could lessen intentions to support non-violent and violent extremist actions. These results point to an imprisonment-extremism nexus that is diminished largely by the realities of prisoner reentry.

Carceral Citizenship as Strength: Formerly Incarcerated Activists, Civic Engagement and Criminal Justice Transformation.

During the era of mass incarceration, a history of felony convictions and imprisonment imposes legal and extra-legal sanctions that strip individuals of rights—what Miller and Alexander (2016) call “carceral citizenship.” Despite the wide-reaching structural constraints that accompany the identity of being formerly incarcerated, many individuals enact their agency with civic engagement to reshape boundaries around individual and collective identity. Building from past convict criminology research (e.g., Ross and Richards 2003), we address the gap of including formerly incarcerated people into policymaking and community organizing around penal system reform. We offer expanded conceptualization of “carceral citizenship” and provide a framework for the transformation of practices that constitute carceral systems. As Goodman and colleagues (2017) demonstrate, the reformation of penal systems is not simply a result of the mechanical swing of a pendulum. Instead, the ongoing contestation between different stakeholders shapes criminal justice. Borrowing foundational theoretical concepts from multiple critical criminology perspectives, we frame the role of “carceral citizenship” within the transformation of the penal system reform.

Will You Die for Your Country? Workplace Death in an Era of Mass Incarceration

People with criminal records in the United States continue to face limited employment opportunities due to social stigma and legal barriers. In contrast to the civilian sector, the military conducts a “whole person” evaluation to screen potential recruits and regularly hires people with felony and misdemeanor records. Moreover, evidence suggests that the military serves as a socially integrative institution and may facilitate desistance from future crimes. However, critics argue that the military exacerbates inequalities by subjecting marginalized communities to the unequal burden of service. Using the data obtained from the Army, we examine the relative risks of combat exposure and casualties between enlisted soldiers with and without criminal records who joined between 2002 and 2009. The results suggest that soldiers with felony and misdemeanor records are more likely to be assigned to combat occupations than those without criminal records. We also find that among soldiers assigned to positions with low combat exposure, ex‐offenders face a higher risk of death compared to those without criminal records. Findings do not dispute the idea that the military facilitates desistance from future crimes and provides second chances to people with criminal records, but reaffirm the fact that military service costs lives and limbs.

Diminished citizenship in the era of mass incarceration

This paper lays out a model of diminished citizenship as a tool for understanding the experiences of the large population of people who, at least in part by virtue of their relations with criminal justice apparatuses, do not benefit from the full complement of responsibilities and rights associated with citizenship in a modern democracy. The frame of diminished citizenship places mass incarceration within a larger historical and social context, moving ideas about “criminals” away from the individual focus of mainstream criminology and providing a useful framework for considering how a variety of marginalized groups navigate the American landscape. At the same time, the frame of mass incarceration offers insights into a crucial mechanism for constructing, diminishing and enforcing citizenship in the United States. Our argument draws on our decade-long ethnographic research with a cohort of women who had been released from prison in Massachusetts in 2007–2008.

Allison McKim: Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Allison McKim: Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration