Race,economy and punishment: inequity and racial disparity in imprisonment, 1972–2002 |
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Authors: | Henry Jackson Jr |
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Institution: | Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Campus Box 10, P.O. Box 173362, Denver, CO 80217-3362, USA |
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Abstract: | Guided by the Rusche and Kirchheimer thesis, this study examines variation in incarceration rates across states. Time-series regression analysis is applied to 30?years of state-level data to examine how economic factors interact with aggregate measures of race/ethnicity in predicting rates of incarceration. The analysis indicates that income inequality, not unemployment, is the most salient predictor of incarceration rates. That is, state-level measures of income inequality exert a strong, positive effect on state-level incarceration rates, and this effect is particularly salient in the presence of higher percentages of African-Americans. |
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Keywords: | race inequality incarceration unemployment income inequality punishment |
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