The Economic Impact of Incarceration: Measuring and Exploring Incarceration-Related Costs across the United States (original) (raw)

Why are state prison populations declining? Forthcoming, Criminology

Criminology, 2025

After four decades of explosive growth, the United States imprisonment rate began to inch downwards in 2008. Despite fostering extensive public and policy debate, we know surprisingly little about why state imprisonment rates are declining. While prior studies examine correlates of decreases in imprisonment, it is currently unknown how much of the observed decrease in state prison populations can be attributed to decreases in the crime rate since its peak in the 1990s, as opposed to successful criminal justice reforms. This study uses new data on state sentencing reform policies in a decomposition of annual change in state imprisonment rates between 1970 and 2019. Decreases in the property crime rate can account for 43-60% of the observed decrease in the annual change in state imprisonment rates, while sentencing reforms account for another 12-16%. Sentencing reforms have had their largest effects in the Midwest and South but have not contributed to decreases in the annual change in state imprisonment rates in the Northeast or West. These results uncover "varieties of decarceration" across the states and suggest that recent reform efforts-though effective-can only account for a minority of the observed decrease in state prison populations.

Reconsidering State Variation in Incarceration Rates

Politics and Policy, 2020

State incarceration rates have been a topic of much policy discussion. One notable issue missing from much of the literature concerns the various determinants that account for state differences in incarceration rates. Why are some states more or less likely to incarcerate their citizenry than other states? The article examines the 50 states in a cross-sectional state comparative model. Using a dependent variable of state incarceration rates, we offer and test several explanatory models, including socioeconomic factors, political explanations, social control mechanisms, and structural factors. We find that socioeconomic explanations to be the most robust, but we find varying degrees of support for each of our four models.

Reducing the Rate of U.S. Incarceration One State at a Time

Criminology and public policy, 2018

M ore than any other topic, mass incarceration is the preeminent public policy issue that reaches beyond our small community of criminologists. Aside from the large body of criminal justice scholarship devoted to this issue, it is a topic debated by politicians and policy makers and rehashed by pundits eager to advance a specific position. It is quintessential criminology touching on many domains both theoretical and practical-life-course research, public safety, justice, racial inequality, community cohesiveness, and state budgeting and finance decisions. The latter encompasses trade-offs between the funding of expensive prison resources and other state and federally funded social programs including higher education, welfare, and medical care. The National Research Council report by Travis, Western, and Redburn (2014) on mass incarceration highlighted collateral social costs including those to the offender's family, community, and the U.S. polity. Mass incarceration calls attention to a form of exceptionalism most Americans prefer not to brag about. We have been at or near the top of the rate of incarceration among the world's countries for many years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research documents worldwide incarceration rates. Adding inmates in federal and state prisons as well as local jails, the United States had an incarceration rate of 666 per 100,00 in 2015, which was down from its peak of 755 per 100,000 in 2008 (Jacobson, Heard, and Fair, 2017). We are currently second to the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean with 100,00 residents and 799 people in custody. We are still an outlier among modern nation states (Walmsley, 2015). The downward trend in U.S. incarceration since 2008 is much less steep than the growth that drove it to its unprecedented levels. To drive prison

Time and Money: An Examination of Crime, Sentencing and Corrections Budgeting Issues

Social Science Research Network, 2013

America continues to recover from its most recent recession, and the impact on social problems will reverberate for years. In one respect, though, it appears we can breathe easier: the crime wave that many thought to be inevitable did not occur. Crime has remained fairly stable and, in many states, has even declined since the start of the recession, a fact not entirely surprising among criminologists. While many people assume it is inevitable that crime rises when the economy is suffering, an examination of historical trends reveals this is not the case. While violent and property crime did increase during the Great Depression, throughout the remainder of the 20 th century and into the 21 st , the relationship between crime and the economy has been inconsistent. Deeper analysis reveals a complex relationship in which community-level variables may trump macro-level conditions, and different social policies may either push the crime rate up or help constrain it. Yet the criminal justice system suffered repercussions from the recession. The immediate future regarding how the current economic climate may affect correctional policy and practice is discussed in this article. These projections are discussed within the context of what history has revealed regarding crime rates, sentencing practices, and recidivism. Finally, some strategies for longterm investments to reduce crime are presented. Over half of U.S. states had their corrections budgets reduced as a result of the fiscal crisis. 1 While it is